March 3, 2017 Show with J. V. Fesko on “The Trinity & the Covenant of Redemption”

The Trinity as a Biblical Doctrine Despite the Word’s Absence

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Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this third day of March 2017, and I am delighted to have back on the program Dr. J .V. Fesco, author, academic dean, professor of systematic theology and historical theology at Westminster Seminary in California.

We are going to be discussing his book, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you.

Back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. J .V. Fesco. Hey, Chris, it's great to be here with you today.

Great, and in studio with me is my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

And it's good to be back again. Thank you.

And today, again, the Presbyterians are outweighing or outnumbering the Reformed.

Baptists. And I think this is good for you, Chris. I really do. Yes, I happen to be... I'm glad you noticed those things.

I happen to be a Reformed Baptist, and my co-host is a Presbyterian, as is my guest today. But, in fact, I'm going to announce our email address right off the bat. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. J .V. Fesco on our theme, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the goal USA. Well, Dr. Fesco, you have written this book, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption.

And let's start off with the Trinity. A lot of the cults, non-Christian religions, or religions that claim to be Christian, but in reality are not. They are non-Trinitarian, Arian, and other forms of heretical expressions of God and the Godhead and so on.

They will very often bring to our attention that the Trinity, the word, is not in the canon of Scripture, it's not a biblical term, and they will say therefore it is not to be trusted as a biblical truth, and they will say it is an invention of the Catholic Church.

If you could respond to those things that immediately are what we are confronted with typically when we face the.

Cults. Yes, I think that one of the first things that we've got to recognize is that, you know, yeah, there are many things in the Scriptures that we develop terms to describe what is there, and just because the term does not exist does not mean that the concept is absent.

And in particular, the term Trinity was coined by an early church theologian by the name of Tertullian, who was basically trying to come up with a word that would describe how God is one God, but in three persons, and he came up with the idea of a triunitas, or a threefold, you know, threefold God unity, and that's where we get Trinity as a combination of three and unity.

And so the idea is that, yes, that term doesn't exist in the Scriptures, but the more fundamental question is, does the concept exist? Do we find a good reason to say that there is one God, and nevertheless this one God is manifest in three persons, as, you know, the classic historic creeds of the Church do affirm these things, such as the Council of Nicaea, or the Council of Chalcedon in the 4th and 5th centuries respectively, or as these truths have been professed by literally the whole, you know, Christians around the world.

And so the question is that we'd want to ask is, will we teach these truths? And it appears in a number of places, but, for example, when you read in Deuteronomy 6 -4 that it says, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, we're certainly affirmed that there is one God.

Is that what's called the Shema? Is that what's called the Shema?

Yes. Yes, and that's the Hebrew term that means here, you know, it's the command, Here, Israel, listen to what I'm about to say. And so it affirms that there is one God. But on the other hand, we find other passages of Scripture, such as the opening of John's Gospel, when he says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Where there's a clear distinction in that there is the Word, and there is God, but nevertheless the Word is also God. And you see John in his Gospel ascribing things to the Word that were only traditionally and typically ascribed to God in the Old Testament.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And so I think that that is, you know, an important passage that we say, Okay, how does this passage fit in connection with the affirmation that there is one God, and how can John ascribe deity?

See, for example, in Paul's famous ninth chapter of Romans, where he is talking about all of the blessings that Israel has received, and he says, To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to Christ, who is God over all.

So here he explicitly identifies the Messiah as being God over all. But just a chapter over in the next chapter, when Paul is talking about the Gospel, and he goes and quotes the prophet Joel, when he says, you know, Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

And he says that in Romans 10 -13. Where does he finally land? He says in verse 17. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through. To call upon God is to call upon Christ. And in line with the earlier passages that we just referred to, you know, this Christ has been identified as God.

But another passage that's important that we want to take into consideration is in the baptism of Jesus, where here we have Jesus. He's been baptized, and in addition to this, we have the Father proclaiming from the heavens, you know, This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased.

Here is the Christ who is identified as God, but now here is God, you know, speaking from the heavens. And then in the segue that we go from Matthew chapter 3 to Matthew chapter 4, Matthew tells us,. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

And now here's a third appearance of somebody. Who is this Spirit, and why does God pour out and anoint his Son with the outpouring of the Spirit, as the Spirit descends in the form of the dove upon Christ to rest on him?

Well, the church looked at all of these things and said, you know, how do we put this all together? And in the book of Acts, for example, when Ananias and Sapphira are caught in their deception, and Peter says, You have lied to the Spirit, you have lied to God.

How do we account for this? Well, this is where the church, after, you know, hammering these things out on the anvil of controversy and through church councils, comes to the conclusion, and the right conclusion, I think, by affirming that we have one God and that this one God is in three persons.

And in the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says, In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons of one substance, power, and eternity. God the Father, God the Son, and God... You know, we embrace this teaching because it's ultimately a scriptural teaching, that the scripture speaks of this one God and three persons, to which we append the term the Trinity.

The Trinity in Scripture and the Church’s Confessional Witness

Yeah, before the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Has a comment or question, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. First of all, you mentioned clearly that the scriptures teach that people can sin against the Holy Spirit, which would prove that the Holy Spirit is not an it, it's not a power or force, it's a person.

Mm-hmm. Or he is a person, I should say. And the claim that the cults and the non-Trinitarians would hurl at us would actually involve some of what you said. In fact, I'm going to combine what the cults say and what the Roman Catholic Church says.

Both will say we would never have this understanding without the Roman Catholic Church, and you just were speaking of councils that hammered these things out. The Roman Catholic Church will actually want us to believe that those councils created the teaching, rather than just deriving from the scriptures themselves what the teaching is.

And the cults will say, well, you see, the Catholics are right, you never would have a Trinity without the Roman Catholic Church. How do you respond to those kinds of claims by both Romanists and cultists?

Yeah, you know, I think on the one hand, I'd want to distinguish and say that technically speaking, you know, the Roman Catholic Church didn't exist. I mean, the Roman Catholic Church, people in the Roman Catholic Church would object to that.

But it really doesn't become formalized until the 16th century with the Council of Trent. And that's why historically Protestants have willingly appealed to the early Church to say that, you know, that is us in that sense.

Yes, the Roman Catholic Church wasn't codified until Trent. You mean not the Trinity?

Correct. Correct. And so in that sense, we look at this as being as part of the Protestants, as Protestants, we would see ourselves as part of the Catholic with a small c, not Roman Catholic in caps, but the Catholic tradition or the universal tradition in terms of, you know, looking at these things.

And within the context of that, these theologians and pastors that gathered together, they didn't create the doctrine of the Trinity, but as you read these documents and you see what they're doing, and you read the literature surrounding the period, they're hammering these things out exegetically.

But just for the sake of discussion, let's just say for the sake of discussion, you know, to set aside the Church Councils for a minute, you know, I would want to press the case to say, you know, against, say, the cultists and say, when Paul says in Romans 9 .5 that, you know, here is the Christ, you know, God over all, you know, and he says it unflinchingly.

Or just in terms of the opening of Paul's letter in Romans chapter one, where he talks about Christ, and he declared, you know, that he's declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, you know, and he says, Jesus Christ, our Lord, it would be unthinkable.

It would be unthinkable for a first century Jew to ascribe the title of Lord to anyone less than anyone less than God. And Jesus himself pressed the Pharisees when he asked them, you know, quoting Psalm 10, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

You know, he says, how can David call his descendant, you know, and the implied answer is, well, he can if his descendant is actually God, and who but God could sit at the right hand of the Father. And in this sense, we also see this, I think, in Christ's, you know, the crucifixion passages, where the religious leaders crucified him because he claimed to be God.

When you look at numerous passages in the Scriptures, especially, say, for example, in the Gospel of John, where Christ repeatedly takes upon himself the title of I Am, you know, before Abraham was, I Am, that's the divine name.

So you take all of that exegetical information, and I would say, there are simply too many passages for the cultist to say, oh, that's just one text, or that's just two texts. No, it's just there's a, you know, a cornucopia of different texts from which we, you know, come to the conclusion that we worship a triune God.

And then quickly on the, you know, the Roman Catholic question is, you know, I would want to appeal to the standard Protestant idea that the Church does not give birth to the Word, or, you know, correlatively, the Church ultimately does not give birth to doctrine.

Scriptures and its teachings give birth that apart from God's Word, there would be no Church. And that takes.

Precedence. And before Nicaea or the Council of Chalcedon, there were Christians and those amongst the Church Fathers who believed in the concept of the Trinity without using the term, correct?

Yes, absolutely.

All right, Reverend Buzz Taylor, you had?

I was just kind of, you can either, I'm going to the doctor for some teaching here, okay. But I can't understand why the Jews would have a difficult time understanding the concept of the. As soon as inspired scripture was let out of the gate, when it said, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the word for God there, Elohim, is a plural word in itself.

Why would that be instead of using the singular Eloah? I'm not a language expert, so you can, you know, enlighten me if I'm wrong on that.

Yeah, no, I think that it's just a common way of talking about, it's an honorific in the sense that it's talking about the exalted nature of God, and so the plural is used there. And I think that you can find similar occurrences with other terms that in order to elevate the term, you put it into the plural.

But in this particular case, even when you read some of the Jewish commentaries, the very, very early Jewish commentaries on the opening of Genesis, they will, you know, they will not know what to do.

They kind of punt, or they kind of will change some of the wording, say, for example, in Genesis 126, when, you know, the grammar is seemingly off when it says, let us make man in our image. Because it says, then God, singular said, let us make man in our image.

They're not quite sure what to do with it, and so they kind of, you know, they have different opinions, but they don't want to acknowledge anything close to the doctrine of the Trinity. It's not until you get, I think, to the New Testament Church that theologians begin looking at, throughout the scriptures and to passages such as Genesis 126, and say, okay, this is in very seminal form, but it's ultimately speaking of the triune God.

And the way they do that is they look through the New Testament as the apostles and the disciples exegeted these things in the New Testament as they were looking at the Old Testament. So that, I think, is how I would, you know, try to explain that as far as the Jewish reception or non-reception of the idea.

Eternal Subordination, Modalism, and the Need for Trinitarian Precision

We have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know your opinion on the current Reformed controversy on the Trinity involving eternal subordinationism. I know that Chris has had those representing either side of the issue on his program.

Both sides seem to have much Orthodox and Reformed teaching behind them, but disagree on this issue. What is your guest's side on the issue, and if he believes that the opposing side to his own is in serious error?

Yeah, I think, let me say up front that I have not followed the debate terribly closely, but I've kind of kept an eye on it. And a second observation is that it's my understanding that one of the debate participants, Wayne Grudem, you know, made a, delivered a lecture at the recent meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in November of last year, where he changed his view.

And apart from... Really? Yeah, it's, yeah, I don't, I have it somewhere in my office, but I can't comment much more than that, but that he did change his view. You probably would find it out on the internet.

But setting aside, you know, representatives of the different, you know, positions, because I'm not sure who's aligned with what, I would want to say that, you know, I would A, want to affirm the historic, you know, Christian teaching on this that we have basically throughout all of Western Christendom, and it's the idea of the complete ontological equality of all three members of the Godhead.

You know, again, as the Westminster Confession says, that in the unity of the Godhead, there are three persons of one substance, power, and eternity, so that they all are God. And in that sense, to affirm the aseity, or the self-existence of the Trinity.

The second thing that I would want to say is that I think it's unfortunate to talk about the eternal subordination of the Son apart from really explaining in great detail what exactly that means, because at a bald reading of it, it makes it sound like Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, or the Son, is in some sense eternally inferior, which it ends up clashing with the affirmation of the complete and total deity, the full deity of the Son, as the classic creeds affirm.

And in this respect, I don't know that this is Jacob Arminius who affirmed the eternal subordination of the Son, saying that the Son was essentially in some ways inferior, and you can find that in his theological works, the three-volume works that's been written in the 90s.

So that, I think, is problematic. But then the question is, is how do we account for the Son's obedience to the Father? And I think that it's important to recognize that it's one thing to talk about his person as being fully God, and it's another thing to talk about his work as the God-man.

One is necessary, in the sense that we have to affirm the Son's complete and full equality with the Father. The other is, in technical terms, contingent, in the sense that the Son was not under obligation to redeem, but, you know, in the words of Matthew, he voluntarily, the God-man submitted himself to the Father.

And so in that sense, it's important to recognize the distinction between the Son's ontology, or who he is in his being, and the economy, you know, in terms of what he does, in terms of his work as the Redeemer, or in other terms, the procession, the eternal processions of the Trinity, and distinguish those from the missions, the missions of each member of the Trinity.

So that when Christ says, you know, the Father is greater than I, he's not saying, I am somehow ontologically less than God, but rather he's saying, as the God-man, and within the context of the work of redemption, I am voluntarily submitting myself to the will of the Father in order to accomplish the plan of redemption, which is essentially, more or less, the whole idea behind the covenant of redemption, is that this is voluntary on the Son's part, and not a necessary part of his being.

So to say that the Son is eternally subordinate is, at best, or confusing, and at worst, it's even potentially heresy, but I'd want to say, well, let me talk to the person who's saying these things to try to figure out where he or she is.

Right, in fairness to the folks on the eternal subordination side who I've had on this program, who are theologically reformed, they would say, just as in complementarianism in regard to the gender roles, which teaches that a man is not superior in any way, shape, or form to his wife or to females, at the same time they have been given an order where the wife is subordinate or submissive to the husband, not making him superior, it's just the way that it was a part of God's design, and they will say that there is no reason to think that it violates the co-equal and co-eternal nature of the Trinity, because they will, as you must know, that those that are within the Reformed faith would insist upon the Trinity, including the aspect of the members of the Trinity being co-equal and co-eternal.

And by the way, Ronald, you have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, thanks to our friends at Christian Publications, and that will be shipped to you, thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cv, as in Cumberland Valley, bbs, as in BibleBookService .com, cvbbs .com.

We have Joe in Slovenia who has a question, and I have to enlarge Joe's font on his email because it's very, very tiny. Since modalism, also called Sabellianism, was condemned as heresy long ago, and Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy has been taught and disseminated thoroughly and widely for centuries, how do modern-day modalists such as T .D. Jakes gain a following?

What is going on in Christianity that creates a situation which heresy of this magnitude is present and tolerated in broader evangelicalism? Thank you for instructing us today. A very good question. A lot of it, when I have conversations with people that are non-Trinitarian or question its importance, they will very often use some of the rhetoric that I brought up earlier.

They will say, well, I don't need the Catholic Church or councils to define what I believe from the inerrant Word of God. I will just look at the Bible, read what it says, and sure, it talks about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but I don't need to be bound by any kind of Trinitarian understanding of that, and they will typically wind up devolving into some kind of a heresy like modalism, but if you could explain yourself why you think this is tolerated in a much greater way than it was centuries ago.

Yeah, I think there are a couple of reasons. The first is that I think that there's a tendency, especially at least in the United States, I can't necessarily comment as much about other parts of you know, Western culture, but in terms of the United States, in terms of that, we often believe that Christianity begins with our own profession of faith, and that we don't realize that, you know, when we make a profession of faith in Christ, it's not just to do so as individuals, but rather as individuals bound to a body, the Church, and that this Church extends from the present day all the way back to Adam and Eve, and so that when we're thinking about these things, we have to recognize that we are not the first to come to these ideas, you know, and to come to the Scriptures.

Secondly, I think that in that regard, when Paul says in Ephesians 4 that Christ has given gifts to the Church, and that these gifts are pastors and teachers and what have you, that these theologians in the past are part of Christ's gift to the Church, and so that when we come to study the Word of God, we have to recognize we're not the first ones to come and study the Word, and that many other gifted people have been given to the Church to teach us.

And so the saying that I like to use is that we're theological hobbits who get to stand on the shoulders of these giants, so we can get a greater glimpse of the glory of Christ, like Zacchaeus sitting in that tree.

So that, you know, we want to say, well, what does the earlier Church have to say about this? I'm not the first to read this text, and maybe I can learn something from these theologians of the past. And so I think that that probably, you know, explains part of it, is that we're disconnected from the past, we don't realize that there are many others that have professed the faith, and then that these other theologians from the past are gifts to the Church.

And so in that respect, I think it requires some humility on our part. Lord, teach me through these other people and through these gifted theologians, because what I may find very difficult, I might be able to have tremendous insight and learn a great deal from other people.

As C .S. Lewis, you know, characterized it, we want to have the fresh breeze of centuries gone by blow through our minds to remind us of truths forgotten, or to show us things that we need to learn.

We have to go to a break right now. And by the way, Joe, in Slovenia, you have also won a free copy of the book we are discussing, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, by our guest J .V. Fesko.

And this is quite a substantial work. It's a gorgeous hardcover book. And we thank Christian Focus in the UK for providing us with these free copies today. And keep your eye out in the mail, or should I say, have your daughter in the United States to whom we are mailing this, have her keep her eye out in the mail for a package from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. And we thank you for contributing to today's show with your question. We're going to a break right now. And if anybody else would like to join those who have already asked questions with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. J. V. Fesco. He is author, academic dean, professor of systematic theology and historical theology at Westminster Seminary in California, and we are discussing his book, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. In studio with me is my co-host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, and I have a humorous email from our faithful listener in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepard's Fellowship says, in reference to that last ad you heard about the New American Standard Bible, he says, only you could hip up Dr. James White, H-I-P as in Peter, hip up Dr. James White.

Good music in the background of the commercial. Well, I have to give credit where credit is due because actually the Reverend Buzz Taylor found that music for that ad and definitely did make it more interesting.

Well, I wonder if anybody's.

Happened to notice how much trumpet exists in all your ads. Yeah, right. Yeah, the Reverend Buzz.

Has been a fountain of musical beds, as they call them in the industry, for our advertising on Iron and he is a trumpet player, so a lot of his taste gravitates towards that. Going back to what we were saying before, before I actually go to a real question that Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker has, or I should say a question regarding our topic, we were talking about, in response to Joe in Slovenia, we were talking about how the doctrine of modalism has really become accepted as not that problematic by a great number of evangelicals today.

Even, ironically, a network called the Trinity Broadcasting Network has one of its Pentecostals teaching on it. Wouldn't you say, Dr. Fesko, that a lot of it has to do basically with the disdain that modern evangelicalism has for theological precision and doctrinal soundness, or even the very concern for doctrinal soundness has been relegated to Phariseeism or nitpicking or being unloving and being sectarian and so on?

If you could comment.

On that. Yeah, I mean, I think there is that tendency, and on the one hand, I can understand it in the sense that sometimes understanding the Scriptures is hard work. It's a very big book, and there are a lot of things in there that, at first blush, are perhaps difficult to understand.

But on the other hand, I want to say that in any type of relationship, whether it's especially, let's say, a relationship between people, the stronger that relationship gets, it's typically going to be driven by a greater knowledge between the two people as to who they are and, you know, getting to know one another, so that when we study the Scriptures, it's not ultimately about simply the acquisition of knowledge, but ultimately getting to know who God is and how he has revealed himself in Christ through the Spirit.

So yeah, there may be technical aspects, technical things that we have to learn and study, but I would liken them to, you know, I know that my wife hates surprises. I know that my wife's favorite color is red.

I know that my wife likes certain types of clothing and certain types of food, etc., so that the more that I get to know her, the more details I know about her. I know her far better than anybody else probably in the world, though maybe her parents would say, well, we know her pretty well, too, and I'd say, okay, sure, but you get the idea, and so that when it comes to studying the Scriptures, it's ultimately about getting to know Christ, and we want to recognize that it's not nitpicking to say that, wait a minute, Christ is not just a man, he's more than that, but he's also God.

Well, how do we account for that? Well, we want to say that he's fully God and he's fully man, and, you know, there are a host of things that come along with that, because in the end, you know, people say, well, why do we have to talk about these details?

Can't we just talk about Jesus? You say, okay, sure, and then as soon as you ask the question, well, who is Jesus, you inevitably get back into those questions as to, you know, as to who he is, and in some respects, this really is ultimately the difference between Heaven and Hell.

You know, I was out in the front yard of my house doing some work, and some people pulled out their Bibles and started saying that there's a Queen of Heaven, and I said, look, I said, you know, you're seriously mistaken.

This is not at all Scriptural teaching, and if you affirm that there is a Queen of Heaven when the Scriptures don't say that, that's tantamount to idolatry, and this imperils your soul. So it's not that we're trying to get to know better who has revealed himself in Christ.

And the Spirit in the Word. Okay, we have again Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepherd's Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina, who says, I think it is interesting that eternal subordination always focuses on Jesus's submission to the Father.

Isn't it another problem that the workman, the Holy Spirit, would be perceived to be of some less value than Christ as he is only the agent of salvation? If we look at all three persons of the Trinity, it is harder to see the value judgments that man places on this argument.