Trinity in Depth, Nature of God, Matt Slick

Fan on. All right, so we are live and I notice the people waiting right now. I just want to make sure you can hear me, so just tell me you can type it in. So make sure everything's fine before I get started.

I'm going to have to make sure the audio is working. It should be fine and then we'll get going. The notes, incidentally, are on the, you know, on karma .org forward slash calendar and so you can just go to get these and we're going to be going through these now in a second.

As soon as I can verify that people can hear me, which I'm not hearing. I'm not seeing anything say right about now they should be saying yes, they can hear me. Laura, there we go. Hello from Karm Pan.

Can you guys hear me? Can you hear me? Hi Matt. Hi Matt. Bill's watching and Chris says yes. Finally someone goes yes. All right, so they can hear me. Good. All right, I can hear you. Good. Bill says good.

You know, it's going to be hard to insult him when he's not here. He's right there. Bill's in a bad place. It's pretty bad. Here's why he's smiling for, but so bad. I'm reaching. That's all right. I don't mind reaching.

Prayer and Introduction to the Nature of God

All right, let's pray. Let's get started. We'll just get into the nature of God. All right. Lord, we ask that you would bless us and bless this time. I ask the Lord Jesus for your grace upon us that the words spoken would be your words and that they'd be your words of truth and that people would hear and we would learn you and about you more and be more impressed, be more knowledgeable, and more in awe with your greatness.

We give you thanks, Jesus, and we ask it in your precious name. Amen. All right, so this, the nature of God, it's a big paragraph right there. We're not going to read the whole thing. We're going to go through step by step, and if any of you are watching, that means you have gotten here a number of different ways, but if you want these notes and you want to follow along online, all you have to do is go to karm .org forward slash calendar, and you'll see tonight's listing there for the 12th, and then it'll say, underneath there's just the notes or whatever it is, the stuff.

You just click on it, it'll put up a web page, and you can then go down to where it says nature of God, and it says the exact same thing. So here we go. All right, so speaking of God, he is spiritual in nature and exists as a trinity consisting of three divine simultaneous and distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

All right, now, it took three nights before we finally got into the very nature of God in a Trinitarian form, but when we say that he is spiritual in nature, John 4 .24 says, as you can read it, God is spirit, and those who worship him and worship him in spirit and truth.

Now, he was talking to the woman at the well, and I just have to brag, I've drank out of that very well. I'm sorry, it's a shameless plug, but there you go. And Luke 24 .39, you see my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bone, as you see I have.

And so we know what spirit is not. We don't know what spirit is. So it's a hard thing to say. People will call me up on the radio or I'll be in discussion rooms, can you define what spirit is, Matt? And I say, no, I can't, except to say some incorporeal substance that is what we are, and that spirit can leave and move.

It could be apart from the body, 2 Corinthians 5 .8, to be absent from the body is to be home with the Lord, 2 Corinthians 12 .2 -4 talks about the man who went to heaven, the third level of heaven, the third heaven, where God is, and so on, incomprehensible thing.

So into the body or out of the body, I do not know. So we would say spirit, soul interchangeably. Now, some will say that the soul and the spirit are different, or body, soul, and spirit. That's called trichotomy.

Dichotomy is that soul and spirit are used interchangeably because they are, and then there's the body. But when we talk about this in relationship to God, he is spiritual in nature, it means that he's non-corporeal in his essence.

And this makes sense because nothing existed until he created it. So the eternal creation, I mean, God existing eternally did not exist in a material sense. And then he became flesh in the person of Jesus.

He exists as a trinity. So the trinity is properly defined as three divine simultaneous distinct persons. So we could say three divine simultaneous co-eternal persons. We can get a little bit more into it.

But the idea is that the three divine simultaneous and distinct persons, they are what God is and has always been. So we see the verses for that in Philippians 1, 2, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So God, the Father's called God. Obviously the Son is called God. Jesus is called God. John 1, 1, verse 14, Colossians 2, 9, all these verses that we've gone over and others have gone over and stuff like that.

And also the Holy Spirit is called God in Acts 5, 3 -4. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land while it remained unsold?

Did you not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it you conceive this deed in your heart? You've not lied to men, but to God. So he lied to the Holy Spirit. He lied to God.

And 829, then the Spirit said to Philip, go, join this chariot. There's the attributes of the personhood of the Spirit. He can speak, has a will, and things like that. So in the trinity, we would say that the God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now I could go into quite a bit here on the issue of, well, we'll just do that later. We'll save it for later, the economic and ontological trinity. We're going to talk about that a little bit. So let's just move on to the second part.

Divine Simplicity and the Trinity as One Simple Being

The trinity, this is important, is not comprised of parts. That would be called partialism, but is one simple divine being. It's called divine simplicity. So what I tell people when they ask me about this, how can God be one thing and three persons?

And I say, well, first of all, I don't know how, but not knowing how does not mean it's not true. There are certain aspects of God's actuality, his existence, his substance, his essence, that I cannot understand.

Nobody can understand. God just does not reveal them to us. How is it that God can be one God, but three persons? I don't know. Now there's nothing illogical about them. If it's illogical and contradictory, then it cannot be true.

People have said to me, well, they can prove the trinity is false. And I say, how? And they say, by showing a contradiction. I said, great, please do. And they never do. Because what they'll often do is make a conflation of terms.

They'll say, well, one God, three persons. See, that's a contradiction. Say, how is it a contradiction? Well, it's obvious. It's right there. It's a contradiction. No, it's not a contradiction. Show me how it's a contradiction.

Because saying God is one and yet also three persons, it's not saying God is one God and also three gods. It's not saying he's one person, but he's also three persons. That would be contradictory. It's where the one term is used and said, it's this case, but it's also not the case.

That's a contradiction. So you can't, the law of non-contradiction law, LNC, has different forms of being used and described, but it cannot be the case that I'm talking to you. And it's also not the case that I'm talking to you.

That's a contradiction to say both are true in the same sense, in the same way, at the same time. So what we have here in the issue of the doctrine of the trinity is not a contradiction. It's not. It can be paradoxical.

It can be an enigma, but it's not a contradiction. And when people tell me that if they can't comprehend it, it's not true. And I get this too. Well, I can't comprehend it, so I can't believe it. Well, how are your thoughts generated in your physical brain?

Can you comprehend that? No. Can you comprehend that the eagles MC squared? No. You comprehend how you might list something else out? No. But yet you believe them true. I thought the same thing. People don't know how to think critically across the board.

They don't know what it means to think critically and objectively. What happens a lot is people will send upon the issue their own machinations and their own faulty logic, lack of critical thinking, and say, this is the truth because I decided it is.

And when I expose them, not expose them in a malicious way, but say, no, it's just not true. I forgot the exact verse, but yesterday, I think it was Judges 29 or something like that, a guy, I was discussing something in a room about Roman Catholicism in a chat room, and this is a good example of something.

And he said that you can prove that people in the afterlife can hear our prayers. I said, really? Like it's from scripture? He goes, yeah. He went to where, of all things, where Elijah's bones were in the grave and they lowered a dead man down in and he was revived.

Did see, there you go. Okay, please explain the connection there. And it's an example of bad logic. And he said, well, you see, Elijah resurrected him, made him alive. That means Elijah's in the afterlife and he knew what was going on.

You see, Matt? And I said, where does it say in the text that Elijah did the action of reviving him? It was his bones. So touching his bones didn't mean Elijah did it, but it means that God did it. And someone came into the room and said, hey man, I think it's Psalm 78, 12, where God does all the miracles by himself.

I remember, memorized that one. I went, oh, thanks. Hey, another arrow in the quiver. But the point I'm trying to make is that this gentleman, and it took about 15 minutes and finally he admitted it didn't say what he thought it said, but I had to really work with him very patiently.

Does it say that Elijah was performing the action? No, it just says he was revived. It doesn't say who did the reviving, right? So you can't use that for that verse. And it took a while for me to convince him, but it was a good example of what not to do.

A good example of mistaken thinking and logic. People so often will impose on a text something they automatically think is true. Two men in a field, one has taken, one has left. That's the rapture. No, it's not.

The rapture curse, they'll replace it, but that's not it. And so it's very critical that we understand that when people come to us and they deny the doctrine of the Trinity and I ask them why, and they say, logical, I know right away that they are not going to be able to demonstrate that it's not logical.

They can certainly demonstrate a paradox, but that's not a contradictory issue. And so all I have to do is just explore their thinking a little bit and I show, well, that's not correct. That's not correct.

And this does not mean that's impossible, et cetera. So this is how the doctrine of the Trinity is, and it was well thought out throughout the history. So when we say that God is not comprised of parts, but as one divine substance, and yet in that substance are three persons.

What I like to say is that God, who is the one thing, reveals himself as three persons. I've had someone recently say, so you believe in divine simplicity? Yes. Well, how could God be a Trinity if divine simplicity is true?

The implication is he's saying divine simplicity means a dynamic oneness, or what's called an absolute oneness that there can be no plurality within it of persons. And I said, well, so what's the problem?

Because I'll often do is just say, you tell me what the problem is, I'm going to hang you with your answer. And I'll often tell them that you give me the answer and I'm going to show you why your answer isn't correct.

I don't care what it is because I just know that you're not answering, you don't understand the issue. And so they'll say divine simplicity means God is one thing. And so they said, how can God be divinely simple as well as Trinitarian?

Now he says, I just say, I don't know. And that derails their argument and their criticism right away. It's not me just avoiding the answer. The truth is, I don't know. I know that the Bible says God is one and Deuteronomy 6 .4, here, O Israel, the Lord God is one.

And the word one is echad, which means composite unity. That's the word used, not echid, which means a singularity. And so how is that possible? It's like one bundle of pages is echad, one sheet is echid, but God is one.

That's how it's spoken of in the Hebrew. Divine simplicity simply says that God is one thing. And so what I'll do is I'll illustrate this. I'll say, let's take a carbon sphere. Let's say it's a foot diameter, or I'll say 10 centimeters in diameter.

It doesn't make any difference. If it's carbon 12, carbon 13, carbon 14, doesn't make a difference. It's one thing. Try to say carbon 12, carbon 14, let's say, which has a half-life of 5 ,730 years, at any rate.

So it's one substance. And that one substance is the three divine persons. That's what I'll say to them. And they don't know what to do with that. And what I'm doing, I'm just saying, just what it says, just what it says.

But we need to understand that God is not comprised of parts. He's not part sun, part Holy Spirit, and part Father. We tend to think of that that way. That's a problem. Sometimes people call me up on the radio and say, how do I explain the Trinity to my five-year-old?

Well, then you're going to imply the idea of parts, because they don't have generally the conceptual capacity to understand the blending of ontos. We won't get into all this stuff, right? So I just say, it's okay, just do that, and then explain more later on better.

And so God is one simple divine being, not parts. As you can see, I already quoted Deuteronomy 6, 4, Mark 12, 29, Jesus answered, Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one. John 1, 5, this is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness.

Just saying he is light, he is this one thing, he's just something, and that's what it is. We have to make sure that we don't impose a value on God's very nature and essence that the scripture does not necessitate, or that logic does not necessitate.

One of the things that I've started to do about 15 years ago is start speaking logically to a lot of atheists. They were not accustomed to a Christian using logic, and I was told that many times. I said, we have never encountered anybody who uses logic like you do.

And I'm not saying I'm the great logician, I'm just saying, well, that's bad if you haven't encountered any Christians, because there are Christians out there who are very logical. John Frame, Cornelius Van Till, we had R .C. Spruill, and there's a lot of brilliant people out there.

I said, you just haven't heard of them? They said, well, I'm the only one. That's not good. You should be expanding your circles. But the point is that they weren't used to it, and they're still not used to it.

I was telling Nick a couple of days ago, I was invited into an atheist philosophy room, and a different forum altogether, and they were very polite, and PhDs in philosophy. One guy's working on his PhD, the other one's something else, PhD.

And they were nice guys, and they were talking about morals. And I said, well, if you're not a Christian Trinitarian, your most logical position to hold is moral anti-realism, which is there are no moral actualities or truth statements that have any bearing in actuality, because there's no universal mind.

And I said, if the Trinitarian God did not exist, I would be a moral anti-realist. That's the only other option, logical option. You can't say that morality exists between these two pages or under that rock or within an action or intention, because intentionality, you have to determine a universal aspect of it.

Anyway, I said to these guys, I said, so you see this logic, and I said, so you guys are talking about what's moral. And I said, how do you decide what is moral? What standard do you have? Because each one of you is different, and you might disagree on what is moral.

So you have different opinions about what it is, but you have to have a universal standard by which you can say what is moral, what is not moral. You can't find it under a rock. You can't find it inside of book pages or whatever it is.

You can't do that. It's not materially based. The only way to justify it is a universal mind who has the quality and nature of absolute moral character, which is revealed to us. And then moral anti-realism is not true.

And then we can understand God and we can understand why something is morally right or wrong. And I said, and if you don't presuppose a Trinitarian God, which is necessary precondition of moral intelligibility, you must necessarily be a moral anti-realist.

And if that's the case, your PhD in philosophy and moral ethics is useless. And this guy goes, whoa, you know, and it came out better that time actually. And they weren't used to, they were not accustomed to a Christian talking like this.

Now there are lots of Christians who talk like this, but they're just not used to it. And logic is something that's very important. Particularly, we come to the issue of the doctrine of the Trinity, which we're going to get to later on how it works with the Trinity chart that I got there.

It's just really simple. And that's on page three, we'll get to that. I don't know if that's in the, I think it is in the notes on line two, it should be. Okay, having wasted a lot of time on that, let's get going.

The Trinity, Divine Simplicity, and the Law of Non-Contradiction

Now here's an important concept. Neither person of the Trinity derives his substance from either or both of the others. Now that's logically necessary. If God eternally exists as one thing, then the derivation of essence of one person can't be because of another.

How is it derived or working out of? Now some might come back and say, well, you could have that if it was eternally generated, eternally derived, but how do you have an eternal situation of derivation?

And so we get into these conundrums and these issues. Neither person of the Trinity derives his substance from either or both of the others. Now remember, we've had this discussion before about the nature of the substance of God in personhood.

There's God that we know as a person, and the word person in the context of theological construct deals with the idea of self-awareness, awareness of others can think, can be rational, can say you and yours, me and mine, can love, can hate, things like that.

These are the attributes that God expresses as a singular person. We recognize this. God says, I am who I am. He's speaking in the singular. God said, let there be light. And then God talked and said, why did you disobey me?

And things like this, God speaks in the singular. And so the essence of God is eternally the same. This is Malachi 3 .6, that for I the Lord do not change, therefore, O sons of Jacob are not consumed.

So he does not change. This is called the immutability of God. He does not change. He is eternal. And therefore, the persons cannot be eternally generated in the sense where their derivation of essence is from either or both of the others.

The implication is that there was a beginning. If we say there's no beginning out of derivation, we have a paradox at the very least, and it may be an illogical contradiction. So these are the kinds of discussions I will get in with some people, and sometimes with atheists as well, who will entertain the Trinitarian concept.

What I found myself doing recently with some atheists is saying to them, guys, and very respectfully say, look, guys, I don't think you have a good grasp on the Trinity. And I'd be willing to just open up a room with you guys and just teach you what it is so that you know what the Christian perspective of the Trinity is.

Not that you have to agree with it, but if you're going to argue against it, you should know what it is. Just like when I argue, so to speak, with atheists, and they give me terms, what is contingency?

What is propositional logic? What is moral anti-realism? What is moral realism? What is moral imperative? So I said, I don't know these things. I have a document of about 30 pages of terms you guys have introduced to me, and I go look them up, and I teach them.

I mean, I've tried to memorize them, but I have them all memorized. I say, I need to learn what it is you say. And accurately, I have references from Stanford philosophical online school of philosophy.

I go to these guys, and I'll read them to you. I said, why won't you guys do the same thing when it comes to Trinitarian theology that you're going to attack? And they'll say, that's a good point. We should do that.

That's fair. I've offered to teach them, they've not taken me up on it. And I've even said that only the Trinity provides the necessary preconditions for all intelligibility, that universal background for the transcendental laws of logic, and all universals in particular, which gets into the one and many issue, which you guys I know got that.

So, that was easy? That was nothing? I need more pineapple than you have for that. Okay, you guys will get this stuff. When you get this stuff, you get it more and more. As you're reading through scriptures, you go, oh, I get that now.

And then unfortunately, you listen to sermon occasionally, you'll go, say it, say it. Oh, no. You'll say, drat, Matt, for teaching me this. That's what happens. All right, so neither person of the Trinity derives his substance from either or both of the others.

They are eternally the one being, the divine simplistic, divinely simple being who's eternally existed as three separate persons, okay? Now, the fourth one here, or the next point, the three persons share the same divine essence known as the ontological trinity, but express different functions in creation known as the economic trinity.

So, the ontological trinity deals with the ontos, being, nature, essence. Being, nature, essence. God is three persons who all are the one divine being in totality. If you were to take away any person, God is no longer God, but you can't separate.

It's like the carbon -14 sphere. You take part of it away. Well, it's still, it's not a sphere at that point. This isn't directly analogous, but the essence is not altered in this context, but taken away.

But in the Trinity, it would be, because by definition, in the divine essence, what God is, he's three persons. And when you say three persons, does that just simplify? Is it three entities? We never say entity.

Person has a specific theological meaning in relationship. So, it's considered person? Yes. Personhood, the word in Latin, persona, was the mask used by actors. They'd play the persona of Julius Caesar.

Persona, a brute, or whatever. They had two brute. They had different characters. They would take a different mask, a different face. It's called a persona. I read this. Okay. The theologians took that phrase, that term, let's apply it to the Trinity.

They were seen as one God. That's clearly taught in scripture, Isaiah 43, 44, 45, for example. But they were seen, the Father was called God, the Son's called God, the Holy Spirit's called God. But they were communicating with each other, and they were exhibiting these characteristics, like speech, saying you and yours and me and mine.

They're recognizing those things in themselves, knowing that they were made from God's image. So, the theologians got together and said, he's three persons. Person was the word used to describe this conglomeration of characteristics, awareness, self-awareness, awareness of others, fellowship, love, hate, reason, things like that.

And it became that term. Not necessarily aspects of God, but person. Aspects, and this is why precision of terms is very important here. And so, if someone says, well, that means three entities. By definition, an entity is a being by itself.

A being, you know, I'm a being, you're a being. That's two beings, two entities. But God is not three entities, that's three gods. So, we don't say, we never say three entities. We never say three personages.

That's another, we don't do that, that's Mormon. Three personages, we don't say three beings, we say one God, three persons. And I tell Christians all the time, always say it this way, one God, three persons, one God, three simultaneous, distinct, co-eternal, divine persons, you know, three persons.

And I'll say this to people online, and they'll say, oh, so you believe in three gods. Let's go over this again. I'm patient. Look, that's not what I said. You need to listen, please. One God in three simultaneous, distinct persons.

Well, how is that possible? I don't know. And the analogy I will give is to say time is one substance, time. But it has the aspect, and I'll use the word aspect in this context, it's my analogy, past, present, and future.

But the past is not the exact same thing as the future, which is not the exact same thing as the past, and et cetera. There's not three things we call time, three separate time natures. But there's only one thing that has three, I'll say aspect, three parts.

I want to be careful because it's not a direct analogy to God, but three aspects. And so all three of these have the same nature, time, but we see differentiation among them. And so I think time is a good analogy.

It's the best analogy I know of to relate. I get it. I get what you're saying. One substance, divinity, three separate persons. One thing, time, three, so to speak, manifestations of time, past, present, and future.

At least towards middlemenarchianism, Sabellianism, oneness theology, and maybe even Unitarianism. But analogies are not meant to explain everything. They're meant to explain usually one point, and then we move on and clarify it from there.

So God, each of these three persons shares the same divine essence. This means that the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Now, technically, I'm going to say the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, because in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.

In verse 14, the Word became flesh. So the Word is a second person of the Trinity who is the eternal Son. So we're going to say the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or the Father, and the Word. But each of these, the Word, and the Father, and the Spirit, all eternally are of the exact same identical nature, divinity.

There's no increase or decrease in either of them in the nature, because they're divinely simple. There is no, well, he's mostly divine over there, and lesser divine with this one. That's kind of average divine.

Nope. Divinity means a certain characteristic with certain attributes that belong or necessary with the essence. So anything that exists necessarily has properties. This glass of water, like the glass, if we exclude the water that's in it, the glass has properties.

So I'm tapping it, you can hear sound. This one is translucent. It has certain density, has certain shape, characteristics. And so what we can do is we can say that anything that exists has properties.

This chair, my shirt, this paper. And we recognize the essence of something by the properties that are related to the essence. We recognize a bowling ball because it's spherical, heavy, three holes, right?

And particularly it resides in a bowling alley. It's a bowling ball. But a small, look at this, a small ball on a pool table, a white one, a cue ball, is not a bowling ball. But yet it has the exact same shape, except for the three holes.

And so purpose, okay, so we'll get back on track. So the ontological trinity means that each of the three persons shares the same divine essence. The economic trinity, the oikonomia, and we get this word economy from that.

The economic trinity. Now let's go back to, so we know that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each called God. And that's Philippians 1 .2, Colossians 2 .9, and Acts 5 .3 -4, respectively. The economic trinity is that each individual or each person in the Godhead has a different function.

Now we're not saying they all have different functions, but there are different functions among them. And I'm not saying, I'm going to rephrase that first part. It's not that one person doesn't have any of the same functions as another person.

We couldn't say that, but we can say that we know, for example, the Father sent the Son. It's not the case that the Son sent the Father. We know the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, John 14 .26, John 15 .26.

It's not the case that the Holy Spirit sends the Father or the Son. Only the Son became incarnate, not the Father or the Holy Spirit. So we see a difference of function among them. And only the Son became sin, 2 Corinthians 5 .21.

And then we see, however, if you go to Ephesians 1 .4 -6, just as He, that's the Father, chose us, that's the elect, in Him, that's the Son or the pre-incarnate Christ, the Word, before the foundation of the world, that we will be holy and blameless before Him.

In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed in the Beloved.

Now, I would like to have seen in this pericope a mention of the Spirit, by the work of the Spirit. It would have been great to see that because it would fit my theology a little bit better to have that particular verse include that.

Now, the theological perspective is true. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, and He indwells us and things like that. There's the functions He expresses. But what we see here is something that not many people know about.

Why is it the Holy Spirit does not really appear that much, do much? The reason is because His job is to bear witness of Christ, to bear witness of Christ. We could say that the Holy Spirit is the most humble of the three.

Of course, that's a dumb statement. But what we're seeing is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit's humility in that He does not bear witness of Himself, but of the Son, which is interesting. But nevertheless, we do see two functions, the Father and the Son doing election.

Now, this is interesting because election, the choosing of the redeemed, cannot occur with only one person because the choosing for election must be in the one who represents, because only in Him, federal headship, Jesus is the representative of us.

We died with Him, Romans 6 .8, we're crucified with Him, Romans 6 .6, Colossians 3, 1 through 5, we died with Him. But we died with Him, we were crucified with Him 2 ,000 years ago when He was crucified when He died.

So we can see the now and the not yet. We didn't even live, yet we died with Him. And we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Before the universe existed, election was already placed, already accomplished, because God, who knows all things eternally, chose who would be saved and who would not.

It's not arbitrary. We could get into this quite a bit about God's elective work. I could do a teaching on predestination election, and ordination, and causation, and how they interrelate. But what we're seeing here is that He chose us in Him.

Choosing could not be done apart from Christ. The choosing cannot be done apart from the Father. And ultimately, without the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit applies the redemptive work, the Trinity is necessary for our redemption.

It's necessary for several reasons, because it's the most efficient, minimal necessity of God's existence. We talked about the uniqueness of God, personhood, and one person, two persons, three persons, four, things like that.

So we can review that sometime if you guys want. So the choosing is also involved with Him predestining. So God chooses, that's election. Predestined, that's causation. That's arranging. It's bringing into fruition the choice that He has made.

But the choice that He's made, the Father, is before the foundation of the world, but it's in Christ. So it can only be simultaneously done, not sequentially, in that the eternal nature of the Son has always been in that place, with the eternal nature of the Holy Spirit always in the place to apply the redemptive work.

But the Father elected and gives them to the Son, John 6 .37, all the Father gives me will come to me. Not all that come to me, the Father will give to me. But no, all the Father gives me, they are the ones who are going to come to me.

There's a group called the All, all that the Father gives me, that the Father gives to the Son, and the Son will not lose any. That's the will of the Father, that He not lose any, John 6 .37, 38, 39, 40.

So this is all reflected here in Ephesians 1, 4 through 6. He chose us and Him before the foundation of the world. The Trinity provides for us the foundation of redemption, eternal nature and redemption.

In a Unitarian sense, if God's one person, there could be no election in Christ, because there is no Christ. There is no oneness. There is no necessity of federal headship. Not in the eternal sense. You see?