February 9, 2017 Show with Ryan McGraw on “Knowing the Trinity: Practical Thought for Daily Life”

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February 10, 2017

Ryan McGraw, Professor of Systemic Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in SC, author of The Day of Worship: Reassessing the Christian Life in Light of the Sabbath, & By Good and Necessary Consequence, will discuss: “KNOWING THE TRINITY: Practical Thought for Daily Life”

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:32: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:12: Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this ninth day of February 2017, and I am so glad that we have back on the program somebody who really impressed me a lot the last time we had him on and I knew
01:33: I had to have him back on very quickly, Ryan McGraw. We just started to touch the topic of knowing the
01:43: Trinity because we primarily were discussing another book of his the last time he was on, so now
01:49: I want to devote the two hours, the full two hours, to a subject that two hours could never even delve to the depths of this vast subject, knowing the
02:00: Trinity, practical thought for daily life. Ryan McGraw is professor of systematic theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in South Carolina.
02:09: He's the author of The Day of Worship, Reassessing the Christian Life in Light of the
02:15: Sabbath and by Good and Necessary Consequence, and we are discussing today a book that is not yet in print but is going to be,
02:23: God willing, in print in the not -so -distant future through the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals titled
02:30: Knowing the Trinity, Practical Thought for Daily Life, and it's my honor and privilege to have you back on the program,
02:37: Ryan McGraw. Thanks, Chris, it's a privilege to be with you again. And for those of our listeners who are tuning in to this program, to the
02:47: Iron Sharpens Iron program for the first time because we are steadily getting more and more listeners, especially with the addition of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida.
02:58: We are now in their lineup twice a day, both in morning drive 8 to 10 a .m. and in the evening 8 to 10 p .m.
03:05: where they air pre -recorded versions of our program on 90 .1 FM there in Lake City, Florida.
03:12: Grace Life Radio. But let our listeners know, who may be unaware of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, exactly what that wonderful institution is.
03:24: We're located actually at Taylors, South Carolina, which is on the border of Greenville, and we started in Greenville back in the 1980s.
03:35: And in a nutshell, we are a confessional seminary in the sense that all of our faculty adhere to the
03:43: Westminster Confession and larger and shorter catechisms as representing what we think the Scriptures teach.
03:49: So we have good theological unity. We aim to train men who are going to be passionate preachers of Jesus Christ and useful servants to the
03:59: Church, and we also want to inculcate personal godliness as we're doing that.
04:05: And all of our professors take the model of pastors training pastors, so we've all served in pastoral ministry for considerable time, and so we're really aiming at that kind of apprenticeship model and what we're doing here.
04:19: Well please say hello to Dr. Joey Piper, who I have had on this program a number of times, and tell him that I'd love to have him back on again soon.
04:29: I will. And I know I've had some other members of your faculty on the program.
04:35: In fact, one of my dearest friends, Bill Shishko, I know is a visiting professor there.
04:42: Yes. Yeah, he's a dear brother and he has now also become a client, because he has his own one -hour weekly program on a different network, and I happen to be the agent, the media agent, that got him that airtime.
05:01: So I'm delighted to work with him on his weekly program, A Visit to the Pastor's Study. But this book that you have written, there are other books available on the
05:13: Trinity. Why did you write this book? What was the niche that needed to be filled in regard to this topic?
05:22: I think the main impetus behind this book was the fact that even though you find many other treatments of the
05:31: Trinity that largely defend or define the doctrine, there was not a lot of material that was actually showing the practical use of the doctrine, or the devotional benefit of the doctrine.
05:45: And just to illustrate why that's needed, one thing that struck me years ago was in reading
05:52: Part 2 of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, he has a scene where Prudence is catechizing one of Christiana's children, and she asked actually the youngest child, how does the
06:06: Father save you, how does the Son save you, and how does the Spirit save you? And it struck me that those types of questions are probably foreign to many today, and at least was partly so to me at that time, and I wasn't used to hearing things in those terms.
06:25: But when we think about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, what we're really driven back to is the saving work of the entire
06:33: Trinity, the Father who chooses us for salvation, the Son who purchases us, and the
06:39: Spirit who applies the Gospel to our hearts by uniting us to Christ. And so this book really pushes through a lot of the, we could call them triadic passages in the
06:54: New Testament where all three persons are mentioned, and tries to bring those things to the foreground, not only of doctrine, but of our personal communion with God.
07:05: So the bent of the book is its practical nature, not the neglect of the doctrine, but really trying to elevate the
07:13: Triune God in our affections and make the Trinity eminently practical and personal in every aspect of Christian doctrine and life.
07:22: Well, even though I know that the content of your book is not primarily to define the
07:29: Trinity, I think it would be a good idea to define it anyway, in at least a summary form, because there are aberrations that are all over the place about the
07:41: Trinity. In fact, I have heard from respectable theologians that I know, personally, who say that very often if you were to visit evangelical churches across the country and just ask people at random what the
07:59: Trinity is, very often you would have an aberrant definition, more of a modalist understanding of the
08:06: Trinity. But if you could please give a historic and biblical definition of the
08:13: Trinity for our listeners, for those of our listeners who perhaps are even listening, who maybe be confused on the issue, or even may be in a cult themselves, they wouldn't recognize it as a cult themselves, obviously, but they may be in a religious group that denies the
08:29: Trinity. But if you could define it, please. Sure, and that does fit the contours of the book pretty well.
08:37: In the first chapter I sketched the importance of the issue, much like I did verbally a moment ago, but revolving around the exposition of Ephesians 2 .18,
08:47: and then in the second chapter I addressed the question of the Trinity in the New Testament to lay the groundwork of the question that you just asked.
08:58: So in light of that, if we wanted to begin with a simple definition that summarizes hundreds of years of mature reflection in the
09:08: Church, we could use the Shorter Catechism, that is, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, that there's one
09:16: God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and rather there are three persons in the
09:23: Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, and all that's basically saying is that when we look at the
09:34: Scriptures, we see the fact that there is one God, but there are three distinct persons that are referred to as God, the
09:43: Father, Son, and Spirit, and that's true sometimes by expressed titles, such as Romans 9 .5,
09:52: where Jesus is called the true God, or 1
09:57: John 5, but also when attributes and other divine works are ascribed to the person, such as Jesus creating and sustaining the world and a number of other similar things, and you could apply the criteria to the
10:13: Spirit, you end up seeing the fact that there's one true God, coupled with the fact that in Scripture there are three distinct persons that are referred to as God, but this is not simply one person, so to speak, putting on different masks and pretending to be different people at different times, but this is one
10:37: God that has three distinct, as history says, personal subsistences in the
10:44: Godhead, so what that's basically saying is the personal distinctions describe how the
10:51: Son, for example, is not the Father and not the Spirit, and yet is eternally begotten of the
10:58: Father, and the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. So there are eternal distinctions, eternal relationships between them without any inequality of deity, and I could describe this more thoroughly biblically,
11:14: I could describe it more thoroughly in a historical sense, and I've already begun to blend some of those together in what
11:19: I've been doing thus far, but for the sake of simplicity, what I basically do in the chapter is begin with a definition that there's one being,
11:30: God's one and one thing in essence, and then there's three persons in the
11:35: Godhead, these three of something else, and try to explain how that plays out in the
11:41: New Testament. Why are there personal distinctions? Why does the Bible ascribe deity to all three persons, and yet the persons are not simply pretending to be one person at one time and another at another time, but are actually distinct personal subsistences in the
11:58: Godhead? So that would be a relatively large question to try to flesh that out more. Yeah, I used to like the way that Hank Anagraph of the
12:08: Bible Answer Man would explain the Trinity in a very brief way.
12:15: He was saying that the Trinity was one what and three who's, meaning that there's one
12:22: God but three personalities or three persons in that Godhead, and of course there is obviously a huge element of mystery here that we will never comprehend, but at the same time people can't or should not use mystery as a license to say anything goes in the way that we would define the
12:46: Trinity. Sure. And do you have anything,
12:55: I don't want to sidetrack the conversation today, but there is a debate swirling around even amongst our
13:04: Reformed brethren over the Trinity. It's over functional subordinationism or economic subordinationism.
13:15: If you could just, if you want to chime in on your opinion on this, even on the fact that there is a controversy itself.
13:23: Yeah, the issue would be with respect to the submission of the
13:30: Son to the Father and whether that's imported into the
13:38: Trinity itself or whether it's a result of Christ's incarnation, and I would take what
13:46: I understand to be a classic position that when we describe the persons of the
13:53: Trinity as being equal in power and glory, there is no subordination, and so the
14:02: Son is not in submission to or obedience to the
14:08: Father just because He bears the title Son, but this is something that He voluntarily condescends to do when
14:20: He becomes man. And so this does go back to the description of the
14:25: Trinity in the Bible. If the persons are equal, then all three persons are
14:32: God in possessing all the divine attributes.
14:40: And yet there is order among the divine persons. So for example, Jesus can say,
14:47: I and my Father are one. But then He can also say in John 5 that as the
14:55: Father has life in Himself, so He's granted the Son to have life in Himself. Well, you have to put the idea together that Jesus is equal and one
15:08: God with the Father, and yet simultaneously He's not saying in John 5 that He's giving the
15:14: Son the right to bestow life, but He's actually using the description of a divine attribute.
15:21: He has life in Himself. That's the attribute of self -existence, and yet Jesus is saying that the
15:28: Son has that from the Father. And I think one way we describe that is in eternal generation there's an eternal communication of divine attributes from the
15:38: Father to the Son from all eternity. That's not the same thing as saying He somehow caused the deity of the
15:44: Son, which would result in subordination and inequality. And so there's no eternal submission, there's no eternal subordination, but not all the all the persons of the
15:57: Godhead possess all the attributes of God, but they don't possess the divine nature in the same way or manner.
16:05: The Father does as unoriginated. The Son does as receiving from the
16:12: Father by communication, not cause or origin or creation. And then the
16:19: Spirit by procession from the Father through the Son. So when we put the picture together, I think we'd have to say that the fact that there's order and that there's distinction doesn't entail subordination.
16:32: And then when Christ becomes man, then He submits
16:37: Himself to do the will of His Father, even saying it's His food to do the will of His Father. But I think that that's something that results from Christ's voluntary condescension and willingly taking on human flesh to save us.
16:51: Now it seems that I know people on both sides of this debate, and both are very respected amongst
17:02: Reformed Christians, and they seem to be on both sides thoroughly
17:08: Orthodox and faithful to the Scriptures. Do you think that this issue would actually reach the level of disfellowshipping one another?
17:21: Would it be reaching the level of heresy? Or are these differences just differences within the, as Hank Hanegraaff, to quote him again, as he used to say, the pale of Orthodoxy?
17:35: Are these differences within the pale of Orthodoxy? You're trying to get me in trouble.
17:46: I'm just, I'm just, because this is something that has really surfaced,
17:52: I mean I'm sure it's been going on for centuries, but I mean it's been, it's just surfaced as a point of contention, it seems to me, not that long ago among Reformed people.
18:04: Yeah, you know, and it's strange in some ways how some of these debates have arisen, because I think at least some of them have come from books that have been floating around in print for a while, and for whatever reason no one ever really picked up on these subordination themes until recently, and then you got this blog debate that came out as a result.
18:34: In terms of teaching that the
18:42: Son is subordinate to the Father, and importing that idea into the
18:48: Trinity rather than into the Incarnation, I'll say this, that historically
18:55: I have no question that in the Church of both the East and the West that idea would have been considered heretical.
19:04: And I've found that most of the authors that propose that view have not shown a good use or good grasp of the historical development of the doctrine of the
19:19: Trinity. So that would be one thing, and I realize as soon as I say that, somebody is going to contest that and point to the use of all kinds of sources, so I'm purposefully leaving names out and not being overly specific, but if I can make that as a general comment.
19:36: At the same time, am I therefore going to say that somebody who holds a different view than I do on this issue is denying the faith and not a
19:45: Christian? I wouldn't want to say such a thing, because I think that there are many genuine believers who are genuinely mistaken on things, and I'm sure all of us will find at the last day that there are things like that that are true of us.
20:04: So we need to be gracious and cautious and kind with each other and show extraordinary charity in such things.
20:12: But at the same time, at the very least I could say this. I think importing subordination into the father -son relationship, at least if someone does so in a way that's inherent to the father -son relationship, it does threaten the unity of the
20:33: Godhead, which would have serious consequences. Now perhaps the saving grace in that view is the fact that in the
20:42: Incarnation there's no question that Christ is subject to the Father, and even that Christ's objection to the
20:49: Father is absolutely essential for our salvation. So on the side of the
20:54: Incarnation, the idea not only is valid but essential, but I think it does threaten classic
21:02: Trinitarian orthodoxy and even pick up themes of certain heretical groups to import subordination into the
21:10: Trinity itself. And before I depart from this topic, and this will be my last question on it, on that controversy that is,
21:19: I seem to routinely hear from those taking the opposite view from yours that a lot of this hinges, the view that denies any kind of eternal subordination hinges on an egalitarianism that actually flows into the life of the
21:40: Church in regard to gender roles. Believe it or not, that seems to be something that is connected by those on the opposite side who affirm a form of eternal subordination, because they would say that that is an egalitarian argument to say that there is equality that removes any type of subordination or submissiveness.
22:10: Yeah, and I understand where that's coming from, because I think a lot of these debates came out of a concern to maintain the proper role relationships between men and women in Scripture, and the attempt to push the issue of subordination into the
22:29: Trinity itself while maintaining equality of the persons was a means of illustrating, for example, the husband -wife relationship, and how there can still be dignity while there's distinction of role.
22:43: But the way that I understand the classic Trinitarian formulations, and just to give you an indicator of what
22:49: I've been reading, you know, this week has been things like Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and those kinds of authors from, you know, the early and late medieval period.
23:06: And I could go back to even early Church authors, and what
23:11: I'm seeing there is that the distinctions of persons in the Trinity don't refer to these relationships of authority and submission, but to modes of subsistence.
23:25: In other words, the question is, in what manner do the persons possess the divine nature?
23:31: The Father does as unoriginated, the Son does as begotten, and the Spirit does as proceeding, and then there are various relationships that result.
23:39: That determines the order in which the persons work, so everything is from the Father through the
23:44: Son by the Spirit, say, in creation and redemption. But creating an order and describing the manner in which the persons possess the divine nature is not the same thing as describing authority and submission, and frankly
24:05: I just don't see that in any Orthodox author that I could think of, whether in the early
24:13: Church, the medieval period, or Reformation. We're gonna go to a break right now, and when we come back
24:19: I want you to have an explanation of Trinitarian piety, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
24:31: chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
24:37: Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the
24:45: USA, and I understand if you are compelled to remain anonymous for some reason, perhaps you are in disagreement over your own church on a subject involving the
24:59: Trinity, and you really don't want to identify yourself at this point. Well, you may feel free to remain anonymous if you so choose to, and again our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
25:12: chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away, we will be right back with Ryan McGraw after these messages.
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29:23: Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every
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29:59: Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with 90 minutes to go is
30:07: Ryan McGraw, Professor of Systematic Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina.
30:15: We are discussing his book that is yet to be in print through the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Knowing the
30:22: Trinity, Practical Thought for Daily Life. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
30:34: Before we move on to your explanation of Trinitarian piety, we do have a listener in Slovenia, Joe, who says,
30:47: Please ask Ryan about the common illustrations of the Trinity that we often hear.
30:54: Three states of water, liquid ice, and vapor, clover leaf parts, parts of an egg, shell, white yolk, etc.
31:04: What are the specific errors of these illustrations, and how are they damaging to our understanding of God?
31:12: That's a good question, and a thoughtful one. Also a loaded one in the sense that it's pretty biased against the illustrations, but I would agree with that bias anyhow.
31:27: I'm of the opinion, as many authors are, that we really cannot come up with any kind of illustration of the doctrine of the
31:38: Trinity without unintentionally distorting the doctrine itself.
31:44: You know, for example, the issue of a substance being solid, liquid, or gas might give us the impression of modalism, one person that can really take three different forms rather than actually showing there's one substance with three distinct persons.
32:05: Also remembering that when we're talking about the persons of the Trinity, we're talking about the mode in which the person possesses the
32:13: Godhead, not as though the Godhead is some thing that's passed around among the persons, but the
32:20: Son is God by virtue of eternal generation. We can't say, for example, that H2O is water by virtue of transforming from solid to water.
32:34: The whole idea of transformation there distorts the Trinity itself as well. So the illustrations ultimately fail.
32:45: I think it's better for us to ask the question why they fail, and I think the reason is that the doctrine of the
32:52: Trinity is something that's known by revelation only and not by nature.
32:59: What that means, though, is that the world we live in was created by a
33:04: God, it was triune. So rather than pushing for specific illustrations, say from nature, about the
33:12: Trinity, I think it is fair to say the fact that we have unity and diversity in the world, the old problem of the one and the many, illustrates the fact that we have a creator who's both unity and diversity, a
33:28: God who is triune. So rather than pushing specific analogies or specific illustrations as teaching the
33:34: Trinity, we can simply say more broadly that the general unity and diversity in the world reflects the fact that we're created by the triune
33:44: God. To pull it more closely back to Scripture, I think the Scriptures don't use the analogies to prove or illustrate the doctrine, which of course they never actually do directly anyway, but they appeal to the unity and diversity of the
34:03: Godhead, say in Ephesians 4, to address the issue of unity and diversity in the
34:10: Church. So the Puritan Thomas Manton can say to us there that we should be imitators of the
34:17: Trinity as a Church, because we're one Church in one Father, one
34:23: God and Father of us all, that is, and one Lord, one faith, one baptism, endeavoring to keep the unity of His Spirit and the bond of peace.
34:31: So that type of thing is not really an illustration of the Trinity, but I think it does illustrate how the
34:37: Trinity finds its reflection in the Church and in the creation.
34:44: So that's my way of saying don't come up with illustrations to prove the doctrine, but at the same time recognize the hand of your triune
34:52: God in the Church and in the world. Amen. And we'll go to one more question before we have your thoughts on Trinitarian piety.
35:01: Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island asks, is it true that a denial of the
35:07: Trinity totally destroys a correct understanding of the Atonement? In other words, since we have infinitely offended
35:15: God, only everlasting blood can make atonement for sin, so therefore
35:20: God's blood has to have been shed on the cross to satisfy His wrath.
35:27: Yeah, it's a good question and it actually gives me a nice lead -in to the chapter on Trinitarian piety.
35:39: Let me begin to answer your question with an appeal to history. In the 17th century,
35:48: Arminianism was a bit different than what we may be familiar with today if we know that term.
35:55: We tend to think of people who believe that the call of the
36:01: Spirit is not irresistible and can be rejected by us, that Christ died for all men and not simply for the elect, and so on and so forth down the list.
36:12: But historically, the Arminians also taught that the
36:20: Trinity was biblical, but it wasn't necessary for salvation. And for that reason, a lot of Reformed authors classified them as Missinians or Unitarians, basically saw them as totally heretical.
36:37: They also believed that since Christ died for all men, Christ cannot be a substitute for all men.
36:47: Right, I had actually heard on a documentary that I saw that Jerry Johnson produced where a
36:58: Nazarene professor at a Nazarene university or seminary was chastising his fellow
37:04: Arminians for using the term substitutionary atonement. He said you can't use that term if you are
37:11: Arminian because therefore if Christ is a substitute for all men, all men will be saved.
37:17: And we know that that's not true. That's what he was saying. And that's the exact issue that is arising in the 17th century.
37:25: So the Missinians who were Unitarian and denied the deity of Christ also denied satisfaction and substitutionary atonement.
37:35: The Arminians didn't believe the Trinity was necessary for salvation, even though it was biblical, because they couldn't see any practical use for it.
37:43: And they also denied substitutionary atonement because otherwise it would result in universal salvation.
37:50: So the atonement is redefined. So think about it this way. If you don't have a father who sovereignly chooses some people to salvation, and you don't have a son who successfully purchases the people whom the father gave to him, and you don't have a spirit who then ensures that the hearts of those people will be receptive to the message of Christ and receive him so that they can be brought to the father, if you deny the sovereign work of all three persons, then why would the doctrine be necessary for salvation?
38:28: So this is why a lot of the Dutch theologians responding to Arminianism, such as Votius in the mid -17th century, starts his discussion of the
38:38: Trinity by saying that the Trinity is the foundation of all fundamentals, and it's the most eminently practical doctrine in the whole
38:47: Bible. Now, that illustrates not just an open slam against Arminianism, but it also illustrates the different attitude between a classic approach to the
38:59: Trinity, at least in a Reformed context, versus the neglect that we tend to see today.
39:07: So the question that this person has asked is, again, a good lead -in to Trinitarian piety, because in the
39:14: New Testament, you have the Trinity really woven like a thread with a tapestry throughout the entire
39:22: New Testament. And if you pulled it out, the whole thing would unravel, and the New Testament authors would have nothing left to say, and no gospel left to preach.
39:32: So if you deny the Trinity, you lose the Atonement. Via John 1, you lose creation.
39:38: Via Ephesians 4, you lose the Church. And then via 1
39:45: Peter 1, you lose the whole plan of redemption. I mean, and I can go on and on and on, and if you start looking through the chapter headings in this book, each chapter basically picks up another one of these texts and starts weaving the implications of the
40:02: Trinitarian doctrine into Christian faith and life, and really is showing why these things lay at the heart of our devotion to God and our worship, as well as our faith.
40:13: We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks,
40:21: I have heard Roman Catholics repeatedly say that although we could gather up enough information from the
40:30: Bible to come up with an idea that supports the Trinity, we would never have a clear definition of the
40:38: Trinity from the Scriptures alone, without the help of the infallible papacy and the magisterium of the
40:46: Catholic Church. How do you respond to this argument that is routinely made by Roman Catholic apologists?
40:53: Well, I think we have to understand a few different things. As one author put it recently, when we say we believe in sola scriptura, we're not saying we believe in solo scriptura, and the difference is, it's one thing to say that the
41:12: Bible is our only basis of authority, and we only believe what we believe because we learn it at the feet of Christ from His Word by Spirit.
41:25: It's another thing to say that we read the Bible by ourselves, cut off from the
41:33: Christian Church and from its historical expressions. And so, in other words, in Reformed theology, there was always a push in Classic Reformed thought, and you can see this easily, for example, in Calvin's Institutes, to prove the doctrine from Scripture and also to find precedent for the doctrine in the
41:54: Church Fathers. It's not because the Church Fathers have authority on par with Scripture, but I think it's largely because of the nature of Christ's promises to the
42:04: Church, such as Ephesians 4. Christ promised to give us pastors and teachers that we wouldn't be tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and that we would come to unity and maturity and faith in Christ.
42:17: And so, this means that even though the teachings of the Church and the teachers of the
42:24: Church in the past don't have the authority of the Bible and are not divinely inspired and can err, and we might have to reject what they say at times, in looking to the faithfulness of Christ, we should also expect that the
42:41: Lord uses the Church and uses Her teachers to help us understand the Bible better. So we can't take a
42:47: Catholic view where we elevate the magisterium to the level of the
42:52: Bible itself, which itself contradicts the claims of the Bible. But neither can we, therefore, say it's me on an island with my
43:02: Bible, or maybe me and my modern evangelical church and our Bible, and disconnect from the councils of the
43:09: Church and the theologians of the past. And I think that if we took that attitude,
43:15: I should say, if we took Rome's attitude, then we dishonor the authority of Christ who speaks by His Word and Spirit.
43:23: If we take the other attitude, then we also dishonor
43:29: Christ who speaks through His Word and Spirit in the context of the Church. And so, we read our
43:35: Bibles in conversation with the Church. The other piece of that, though, is that even though we don't have a specifically formulated definition of the doctrine of the
43:48: Trinity in the New Testament, we recognize that the doctrine is there.
43:56: In other words, when Paul explains the Gospel in Ephesians 1, from verse 3 down to verse 14, he explains the
44:05: Gospel and his praise to God for the Ephesian Church in terms of the
44:11: Divine Father who chose the Church, and the Divine and Incarnate Son who purchased the
44:16: Church, and the Divine Spirit who seals redemption to the Church, who is the seal of redemption and is the down payment of what
44:24: Christ has purchased. And what we end up seeing is that it's not that the doctrine is not there, but without the doctrine you can't say anything else.
44:37: The Church may come up with its own vocabulary to explain what it's seeing in Scripture, but they're not coming up with the doctrine itself, and they're simply learning to articulate, usually in response to opponents and those denying the doctrine, what the
44:55: Bible actually says. And even if they use extra -biblical words in doing so, that's not the same thing as saying we wouldn't have a doctrine of the
45:03: Trinity without the Church. I think Paul had a clear doctrine of the
45:08: Trinity, or he wouldn't be able to speak in the way that he did. We may use words like person and subsistence and essence and all these other things that are thrown out because of the
45:21: Church's reflection, and those things help us gain clarity, but they haven't created the doctrine for us.
45:28: Yeah, in fact, it's not only Roman Catholics that make that claim that you cannot have a Trinity without the
45:34: Church of Rome. The cults say that, that reject the Trinity. They say that this is an invention of Rome.
45:41: But anyway, that was a very helpful explanation that you gave. I can't resist here, but Sassinus, who was the father of Sassinianism, which was basically a form of Unitarianism in the 16th and 17th century, his tombstone is something like,
46:03: Luther laid the foundation,
46:09: Calvin built the walls, and Sassinus put on the roof. And I might have that a little bit off, but the idea is the principle of Scripture.
46:19: And they basically are arguing that the Sassinians were the true heirs of the Reformation because they were willing to jettison the
46:28: Church Fathers, and willing to jettison all those other things. And they basically said the same thing. The only reason you people believe in the
46:35: Trinity is because of the authority of the Church, and the Protestants took away the authority of the
46:41: Church, at least in its magisterial sense, and therefore, if you're really going to be consistent, you need to be a
46:48: Sassinian and get rid of the Trinity, and get rid of this dependence on the
46:54: Church's witness to Christian doctrine, and let's just go to our Bibles. So really, the
46:59: Sassinians in the 16th and 17th century were the me on my island with my
47:05: Bible people. And no creed but the Bible. I mean, they had creeds as well, but that was, you know, at risk of being anachronistic.
47:13: That was kind of the mentality. And of course, no creed but the
47:19: Bible is a creedal statement. Correct. So you can't get around it no matter how you try.
47:27: Well, anything that you care to add as far as the Trinity in the New Testament, that section in your book?
47:35: If I can combine that with Trinitarian piety, I love the text that the
47:41: Trinitarian piety chapter revolves around, and it was actually one of John Owen's favorite texts as well, which is
47:48: Ephesians 2 .18, that through him, we come to the Father by one
47:53: Spirit. And there, Paul is describing a unity of Jews and Gentiles in the
47:59: Church, and as he does so, he appeals to the work of the entire
48:05: Trinity. So through Jesus Christ, Jews and Gentiles come by one
48:11: Spirit, the Spirit uniting unto Christ, the Spirit uniting them to one another, and the destination towards which they're going is the
48:20: Father, which fits Ephesians 1, where we're predestined under the adoption of sons.
48:27: And so we have this relationship to God as our God and our Father through Christ, and we have this inheritance which is sealed to us by the
48:35: Spirit. And so as Paul is pushing unity in the Church and explaining what
48:41: God has done to and for these people, he goes into this beautiful Trinitarian description of the
48:48: Gospel in one verse. Interestingly, a few verses later, he gives a
48:54: Trinitarian description again in one verse of the Church itself, which results from the work of the saving act of God.
49:04: And so as we focus on the Trinity in the New Testament, I do try to prove from a number of verses the basic components of a
49:16: Trinitarian theology, that there's one God, that there's three persons, and that these are three distinct persons.
49:25: They're not just pretending, and try to formulate the doctrine.
49:30: I also try to push the idea that these ideas and these thoughts become the backdrop for the rest of the
49:41: New Testament, and really, in some sense, the greatest proof for the doctrine of the
49:46: Trinity in the New Testament is that it's never proven. It's simply assumed, and it's woven into everything else that we see.
49:58: Well, we're going to be going to a break in a moment. Before we go to the break, I just wanted to remind the
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59:54: Iron Sharpens today. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am
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01:03:10: Before I return to my interview with Ryan McGraw, I just want to highlight some upcoming interviews that we have in the future on Iron Sharpens Iron, especially for the benefit of our new listeners with Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, who hear the program pre -recorded.
01:03:27: So this way you may have some advance notice on when you can submit questions via email, even prior to the airing of the interview, so that we can have your questions as well to ask our guests that are going to be on,
01:03:46: God willing, in the future. And a couple of them involve free books that we're giving away to those submitting questions.
01:03:55: The first is that I'd like to highlight is on February 15th, which is a
01:04:00: Wednesday, my old friend Ken Samples, who at one time was a co -host along with Hank Anagreff on the
01:04:08: Bible Answer Man program. Ken Samples, a dear friend of mine, the very first Christian that I arranged a
01:04:17: Bible conference for in my early days of being a born -again believer back in the 1980s, when
01:04:24: I got him a speaking engagement at the church where I was a member, Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, which would later merge into a church in Merrick, Long Island and become
01:04:36: Grace Baptist Church, Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island. But Ken Samples, he is going to be discussing his book,
01:04:45: God Among Sages, why Jesus is not just another religious leader.
01:04:51: I think an excellent topic for our time of pluralism, which has saturated the religious world and has even crept into evangelicalism.
01:05:05: And I also want to highlight the following Wednesday, the 22nd of February, Don Kistler, who is probably one of the greatest experts on the
01:05:18: Puritans alive today, and he is the founder of Northampton Press, and I'm looking forward to have
01:05:26: Don back on the program to discuss the importance of the Puritans. Last but not least, on Tuesday, the 28th of February, we have
01:05:33: Larry Taunton, who is going to be discussing his new book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens. He had become a friend of Christopher Hitchens before Christopher Hitchens passed away, and he will offer a lot of insight into the mind of this atheist.
01:05:47: So I hope you mark your calendars for those interviews, and I look forward to receiving your questions about them.
01:05:54: Well, now we're returning to our discussion with Ryan McGraw, our guest today, who is discussing the
01:06:03: Trinity. In fact, specifically, he's discussing Knowing the Trinity, Practical Thought for Daily Life, which is a new book yet to be in print that is going to be published through the efforts of the
01:06:17: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. And just out of curiosity, Ryan, I'm not aware that the
01:06:24: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals has their own publishing house. Are they using an actual existing publisher for this work, or are they actually going to be putting it into print themselves?
01:06:34: They're actually printing it under their name, and they don't print a lot of books, but this was actually partly in conjunction with a new site,
01:06:46: Meet the Puritans, and I'm actually one of the contributors to that site.
01:06:52: And then Danny Hyde, who's our general editor, you can see wrote the foreword to this volume on Knowing the
01:06:58: Trinity. So the Alliance is going to be publishing this with a select number of things they've done, partly to try to help get the
01:07:11: Meet the Puritans imprint off the ground. So as a way of promoting the book, and hopefully it'll be valuable at encouraging the people and stand on its own, but also it'll help be connected to the
01:07:26: Meet the Puritans site. Yeah, I have enjoyed interviewing Danny Hyde on a number of occasions and look forward to having him back on the program.
01:07:34: Well, let me re -announce our email address if anybody would like to ask questions of our guest, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
01:07:42: chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And we do have a few people waiting, but before I go to their questions, we already brought this up when
01:07:50: Tyler in Mastic Beach from Long Island, New York, asked a question about the
01:07:57: Trinity. But if you could touch, if you could expand upon the Trinity and the plan of salvation.
01:08:05: Okay, there are a number of ways to approach this issue.
01:08:13: And as you can see, looking at the chapter headings, at least you can, Chris, I guess others can at this time.
01:08:20: But I should add, when you mentioned that the book is not yet in print,
01:08:26: I thought it would be before we had this interview. And the publisher actually told me they're sending it out to the printer right away, so it should be imminent.
01:08:38: So I don't know exactly when that will be, but I imagine sometime in the next couple of weeks,
01:08:43: I hope. But as we think about the Trinity and the plan of salvation, and you look at the chapter headings throughout the book, you can see that on the one hand, the chapters are arranged according to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which was partly
01:09:02: Danny's rearranging and helping with the final publication, but also the chapters proceed thematically.
01:09:11: So I begin with the need for not just simply defining and defending the doctrine, but why do we actually need to know the
01:09:18: Trinity? And that deals with Trinitarian piety. And then the doctrine is defined and defended in chapter 2.
01:09:26: But then chapter 3 begins with the plan of the Triune God in salvation, which then lays the groundwork for the work of all three persons in our salvation and history, and then the
01:09:40: Trinity in the life of Christ, and then in the application of redemption, as I've got several different aspects of that.
01:09:48: Moving through the means of grace and ultimately even bringing us to the end in word and sacraments and eschatology with the blessing of God.
01:09:59: So in a sense, the book follows very systematic and even historical progression of thought.
01:10:07: So that being said, with the plan of salvation, the text that I've adopted is 1
01:10:12: Peter 1, 1 and 2, where we read that Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, writes to the strangers scattered throughout
01:10:21: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
01:10:28: Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
01:10:37: So notice that as he's writing to this church, he views them first as being rooted as Christians in the
01:10:45: Father's election and foreknowledge. The means by which they've actually become
01:10:50: Christians is through the sanctification of the Spirit, which I think is the Spirit setting them apart to God and regenerating their hearts in the new birth.
01:11:01: And then the purpose of all of this is to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ.
01:11:08: And the sprinkling there refers to the application of Christ's blood and His work.
01:11:14: So what you have in the text is you're actually beginning with divine election, moving to the
01:11:21: Spirit's call that brings us into communion with God, and then the sprinkling or application of the blood of Christ and our obedience to Him in the middle.
01:11:32: And so what you end up having is a Trinitarian description of God's plan and working itself out in time.
01:11:41: So I gave this text as sort of an introduction to everything the subsequent chapters would say about the work of the
01:11:51: Triune God in the life of Christ, for example, or the means of grace and the ordinances of the
01:11:56: Church, and even the distinct works of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in our salvation.
01:12:04: Maybe one feature that I should add here is that not only do these chapters proceed in the manner that I've described that is logically and historically, but they also are only about three to four pages each.
01:12:23: And I had in mind here not necessarily the theologian in the seminary or the pastor in his study, but also the average person in the pew, and I realized that in talking about some of these questions, when you asked me about defending the
01:12:38: Trinity, and I started going back and forth in my answer between historic language and biblical language, the book itself is actually aimed at reaching not the academic, but the average person, and pulling these ideas, in this case, the
01:12:57: Trinity and the plan of salvation, to the forefront in the average
01:13:02: Christian's thought and life. So the chapters are short to aim at that too.
01:13:09: Well, why don't we start with, as far as the persons of the
01:13:15: Trinity, knowing the Father, and then how the Father saves us.
01:13:22: Okay, this hangs together with the subsequent chapter on the
01:13:28: Trinity and how the Son saves us, and then a later chapter coming after the
01:13:34: Trinity and the life of Christ, which is five separate chapters where I have the
01:13:40: Trinity and how the Spirit saves us. The reason why I'm mentioning all three at once is that all three of these chapters are based on Ephesians chapter 1.
01:13:52: And so, as I mentioned earlier, when Paul describes the gospel and the foundation of the
01:14:03: Ephesians, hope, and why he's praising God with them and for them, he does so in terms of the work of the
01:14:10: Father, which is predominantly described in relation to election and predestination.
01:14:16: That, of course, fits the Peter passage that I just read a moment ago. And then with the
01:14:22: Son, he moves to the shedding of His blood and the purchase of our redemption, and then the
01:14:28: Spirit, the seal, and the down payment. So how does the Father save us? He saves us by choosing us in Christ and predestinating us for adoption before time began.
01:14:41: And that's basically what Paul's getting at. I think one good thing to ask ourselves is, if you had to suddenly, on the spot, without much forethought, give a summary of the gospel, would you explain it in this way?
01:15:03: In other words, would you start describing the work of the Father in election, the work of the Son in purchase, the work of the
01:15:09: Spirit in application? And I think that question illustrates, in some ways, the need for a book like this, but also it challenges us to begin thinking in these terms after a
01:15:24: New Testament pattern. The other thing about singling out the Father, singling out the Son, singling out the
01:15:30: Spirit, is that we're not simply considering the work of God in our lives in a generic sense.
01:15:37: The persons of the Godhead are unified and always act together in everything that God does, but they also act according to their personal properties.
01:15:49: So, the Father originates every divine work, even as the Son is begotten of the
01:15:55: Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Son is the effector, or the one who brings to pass every divine work, and so, and she's begotten of the
01:16:08: Father, and then the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And then also, the
01:16:15: Spirit, then, is the perfecter of every divine work. So, in creation, for example, what you see is the
01:16:23: Father speaks, and through His Word, all things come into being, and I'm really conflating
01:16:31: Genesis 1 and John 1 there, that there's the Father and the Son conjoined in the work of creation.
01:16:39: But then you have the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the deep in Genesis 1, bringing order out of the chaos, perfecting the work.
01:16:48: Well, so in redemption, you have the Father's plan, the Son's purchase, the Spirit's application.
01:16:53: So, when we look to the Father, we need to preeminently think of Him conjointly with the
01:17:01: Son and the Spirit as the origin or source of the whole plan of salvation.
01:17:09: Again, not to the exclusion of the Son and the Spirit, but there's a sense in which calling God our
01:17:14: Father ends up summarizing the height of our privileges as Christians, because as we come through the
01:17:21: Son by the Spirit, we come to the Father, and the Gospel began with the
01:17:27: Father's love, John 3, 16. God so loved the world that He, that is the
01:17:32: Father, gave His only begotten Son. And so, the chapter on Ephesians 1, dealing with the
01:17:39: Father, is really exhorting us to meditate upon the Father's particular work and to love the
01:17:46: Father and depend upon Him. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,
01:17:55: Is it always proper to exclusively pray to the
01:18:01: Father in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, or may we pray to each person of the
01:18:08: Trinity separately? Is that a biblical concept and an appropriate thing to do?
01:18:15: That's a great question, and one that often comes up in this connection. First of all,
01:18:22: I think what needs to be said is prayer is fundamentally an act of worship.
01:18:29: And so, as the larger catechism reminds us, that's why we don't pray to saints and angels.
01:18:36: They don't have the divine attributes necessary to hear us and to grant our requests, so we pray to God only.
01:18:44: So, as such, if prayer is an act of worship and all three persons are equal in power and glory, then all three persons are the object of worship and the object of prayer.
01:18:56: So, we could address the Father, we could also address the Son, and we could address the
01:19:01: Spirit in our prayers. However, we also need to recognize that the normal scriptural pattern is to pray to the
01:19:12: Father through the Son by the Spirit. In relation to the first comment
01:19:17: I made about it being proper to offer prayer to any or all three persons, Acts chapter 7 depicts
01:19:24: Stephen as praying to Jesus to receive his Spirit. So, there is a direct address to the
01:19:32: Son, but unless my memory fails me, I think that's the only example in the
01:19:40: New Testament of direct prayer to the Son, unless you count some of the visions of heavenly worship in the book of Revelation, which you could put there.
01:19:51: So, the question then is if it's proper to pray to the Father, to the
01:19:56: Son, to the Spirit, why does Jesus teach us to pray our Father and to pray in His name?
01:20:04: And then Paul adds in Romans 8, with the help of the Spirit. Well, I think because when we pray to the
01:20:12: Father, we are not simply recognizing the deity of all three persons, in this case, including the
01:20:19: Father, but we're recognizing their order of subsistence and their order of operation.
01:20:25: In other words, another way of putting that is when you pray to the Father, through the Son, by the
01:20:31: Spirit, you're recognizing who God is and what He does. So, all things originate from the
01:20:37: Father. They come to us through the Son, are affected by Him, that they're perfected by the Spirit. So, in my prayers, when
01:20:44: I address God as my Father, I come to Him in the name of Christ, through Christ, and I'm exercising faith in Christ, and I do so in active dependence on the
01:20:54: Spirit, because my prayers are woefully inadequate, and He teaches me what, for whom, and how
01:21:00: I ought to pray, and He intercedes in me with drownings which cannot be uttered. And so, in praying that way, we're actually worshipping all three persons, and we're respecting the order in which they work.
01:21:15: Thank you, Arnie. We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, you said earlier in a critique of Arminianism, at least the historic version of it, that they did not believe the
01:21:32: Trinity was essential for salvation. I'm assuming you meant the belief in the Trinity.
01:21:38: Correct. And the problem comes in with something that Chris mentioned earlier, that many evangelicals, when questioned, would give an unbiblical and perhaps even heretical understanding or definition of the
01:21:55: Trinity, reflecting that of modalism. Would you say that people can be confused and misunderstand the
01:22:02: Trinity without being lost, and would that be a different category of militant opponents to the
01:22:09: Trinity, such as cult leaders who spend much time trying to convince
01:22:15: Christians to deny the Trinity? That's a very insightful question.
01:22:22: I think, as we think through that issue, we have to recognize that even true believers are at different stages of growth, and can't necessarily articulate clearly everything that they believe.
01:22:41: So, if I can use a personal example, when I was initially converted, I came out of a background where I knew nothing about the
01:22:49: Bible, and all I really knew was that I was utterly sinful and helpless before God and deserved
01:22:58: His wrath, and Jesus died in my place to take away the wrath of God, and I had to trust in Him alone for my salvation.
01:23:08: I could not yet articulate things like penal substitution, though I had deceived thoughts of it, and the idea that I knew that Christ became sin for me and that I had to become righteous in Him, or counted righteous, rather, in Him, but I couldn't necessarily explain how and why.
01:23:32: How does that relate to His deity and His humanity, for example? And I think I was genuinely converted, but as I grew in my faith, and especially as I began to read the
01:23:43: Scriptures and attend the Church more frequently, the Lord began to sharpen and deepen that understanding, and with it, hopefully, a love for Christ as well.
01:23:54: The more we know Him, the more we ought to love Him. And I think that's true with relation to the doctrine of the
01:23:59: Trinity. Can Christians misarticulate these things and still be
01:24:06: Christians? I think so, in a sense that we're at different stages of growth.
01:24:13: I think we need to try to help people along and lead them to the Scriptures and pray for them and seek for the
01:24:20: Spirit to work in them, even as He does in us. And yet, at the same time,
01:24:26: I want to couple that exhortation to be patient and gracious with people by saying, on the other side, that I do think it's a tragedy that so many
01:24:38: Christians are content to have vague and uncertain expressions about the
01:24:44: Trinity, or maybe not even be aware of it. I think if we recovered more of a self -consciousness about the types of triadic passages or ways that God is revealing
01:25:01: Himself as triune in the very fabric of Scripture, if those things were more in the foreground of our thinkings, then it would be foreign to us to have vague and uncertain notions about the
01:25:12: Trinity. In other words, I think this vague conception that a lot of people have goes beyond the question, can they still be believers?
01:25:22: I think it really goes to the question, is God the center of the Gospel in our churches?
01:25:28: Are we really preaching the glory of God and the work of God, and is this what is gripping people's hearts?
01:25:37: Is this what people are believing? It struck me reading a piece in an
01:25:43: Oxford book recently on the Trinity in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the author asked at the end, you know, how is it that in our day and age it seems so foreign and strange to us that all these distinctions about the relationship of the persons and the two natures of Christ and how all this works together in our redemption were hot topics not just for the theologians, but for the average
01:26:13: Christian. And he suggests that one of the reasons was that these men were not just theologians, but were skillful pastors who fervently preached these things from the pulpits.
01:26:28: And so the way the Gospel was preached was both devotional and Trinitarian, and I think that if we had more of that, we'd probably see less of the type of the phenomenon that the person asking the question is observing, and I think that's more of what we need.
01:26:48: Yes, there are Christians and denominations who will accept
01:26:55: Oneness Pentecostals as their brothers and sisters just because of the fact that the Trinity is a deep subject and involves mystery, and therefore they overlook the seriousness of the great chasm of difference between a confused
01:27:11: Christian and a cult that is adamantly denying a pillar of the faith, such as the
01:27:19: Trinity, and actually that is like their hallmark. One of the primary reasons they exist is to deny the
01:27:28: Trinity and promote a Unitarian understanding of God. Those things are totally different between your average confused
01:27:35: Christian in the pew and somebody who has perhaps even learned it and has their doctorate even, as some seminary professors have, who are
01:27:47: Oneness Pentecostals or Unitarian, who their chief aim in life is to destroy the concept of the
01:27:55: Trinity as being a false teaching. Yeah, that's certainly a difference, and you know, to give you a positive example as well, with Christians who have sort of a vague conception of the
01:28:07: Trinity and can't articulate things well, one of my favorite things that the
01:28:14: Lord has enabled me to do as a pastor and now as a professor is to start showing people exactly what
01:28:25: I'm trying to do with the passages I'm pulling out in this book, because what
01:28:31: I've often found is that most people I've talked to in the Church are like me.
01:28:37: They really didn't see the persons of the Trinity all over the
01:28:42: New Testament until someone pointed it out to them. In my case, it was reading John Owen's Communion with God, and sometimes what
01:28:51: I've found is as I just start opening texts and just start showing people how integral this is to the
01:28:58: New Testament, it's like turning the lights on and giving them new eyes, and then they reread the
01:29:03: New Testament in a totally different light, and suddenly what they never saw is jumping off of virtually every page.
01:29:10: This is why, for example, the end of this book, I've actually got an appendix listing numerous passages through the
01:29:18: Old Testament far beyond what I could deal with in the book, so people can almost get this overwhelming sense of this
01:29:26: Trinitarian witness of the Bible. And I've just found that this is something that, in virtually every case
01:29:33: I've encountered, once I point it out to believers, they go from being vague about the
01:29:41: Trinity to being excited about it. And I think there's something in the Christian's heart that's hungering for more.
01:29:47: They want to know more of their God, and once someone shows it to them, then they love it. And I think that's how it should be.
01:29:54: Amen. And we're going to our final break right now. It's going to be a much briefer break. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own while we still have time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:30:07: Don't go away. We will be right back with Ryan McGraw after these messages. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,
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01:32:38: That's nasbible .com. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and this is the last 28 minutes or so of our program today with Ryan McGraw.
01:32:48: If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.
01:32:54: chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Well, let's go through as many of the subheadings under Knowing the
01:33:02: Son that we can address today. I'm certain that we're going to have to have you back on the program to get more deeply involved in the discussion on Knowing the
01:33:12: Son and the Spirit, but discuss if you could. I mean, you already brought it up hinging on how the
01:33:20: Father saves, but if you could expand a little bit more on how the Son saves. Yeah, I would love to, and probably the best way is if I take the six chapters of dealing with the
01:33:37: Son and try to tie them together in something of a panoramic overview. In terms of the
01:33:44: Trinity and how the Son saves, again, this is going to draw from the middle section of Ephesians 1, where the
01:33:55: Son's purchase according to the Father's plan is in the foreground, and so this provides the groundwork for how the
01:34:04: Son saves us, and the Trinity in God's plan, and in this summary in Ephesians 1, as well as the one
01:34:15: I gave earlier, 1 Peter, provides the foundation for the
01:34:22: Trinity in the life of Christ. So, in other words, it's not just in God's plan and with respect to the distinct work
01:34:31: Christ actually did to save us, but actually as He accomplished His work through His birth,
01:34:37: His life, His suffering and death, His resurrection, and even His ascension, we see all three persons at work the whole time, and we see the distinct and appropriate works of each of the divine persons.
01:34:52: So I think I can illustrate each of these fairly simply, and I'm leaving out a large part of the devotional quality of the book just for the sake of time, and a lot of it is meant to be more sermon -like in terms of aiming directly at the heart, but in terms of the descriptive part, when you look at the
01:35:12: Trinity in Christ's incarnation in Luke's Gospel in Luke 1 and 2, again, one thing that might be easily overlooked is that it is the
01:35:24: Father who sends the Son, it's the Son who is conceived in Mary's womb, where the angel says the only thing that will be in you will be called the
01:35:37: Son of God, and so we have Jesus in Mary's womb, and it's the
01:35:44: Son, not the Father, not the Spirit that's incarnate, so we rule out any kind of modalism, but then the
01:35:50: Spirit overshadows her womb, and so Christ is conceived of the
01:35:55: Spirit. In a parallel way, like we are born of the
01:36:01: Spirit and we are then united to Christ, who's our
01:36:07: Savior as God and man, and brought to the Father, well, so in the incarnation you have the
01:36:12: Father sending the Son who's conceived by the power of the Spirit, and it's as though in the
01:36:18: Scriptures in every stage of Christ's life, maybe even preeminently in the work of the
01:36:24: Spirit, there's a miniature parallel or reflection in the life of the believer.
01:36:30: So what's true of Christ in a unique way becomes true of us in union and communion with Him, so He's born of the
01:36:38: Spirit that we might be born of the Spirit. And then with His life and His ministry,
01:36:45: I choose the baptism of Jesus by John at the Jordan, where, of course, the
01:36:52: Spirit descends upon Him as a dove, the Father speaks from Heaven, and the Son is baptized on behalf of His sinful people.
01:37:00: He's associated with them as they need repentance, and so I use this as a window into the
01:37:07: Gospel narrative, really, to show that Christ preached by the power of the
01:37:12: Spirit, He did all that He did in obedience to the Father, He cast out demons by the
01:37:17: Spirit, and so on throughout His life. He literally rendered His obedience by the
01:37:25: Spirit. And then also with His death, you have a statement in Hebrews 9 that He offered
01:37:35: Himself to God by the Eternal Spirit, which not all take as the
01:37:41: Holy Spirit, some take it as Christ's Spirit, but in comparison with a lot of these other triadic passages,
01:37:49: I'm trying to build an overarching case that it's appropriate to read that passage like the others.
01:37:56: So He offered Himself to the Father by the Spirit. You could say the Spirit was the altar on which
01:38:03: Christ offered Himself to the Father, so the whole trinity is at work. The resurrection,
01:38:09: I take us to Romans 8, where you have not only in John Christ raising
01:38:17: Himself from the dead, but in Romans, the Father raising Him from the dead by the
01:38:22: Spirit, and you have the Spirit called the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and then again, the
01:38:28: Spirit who raises Christ raises us and brings us to the Father in a perfect, resurrected state.
01:38:37: And then the Ascension, I take us to the book of Acts, where now
01:38:43: Christ, in His exaltation, has received the Spirit from the
01:38:49: Father and poured Him out upon the Church, which then leads to the Church's mission, whereby the
01:38:55: Spirit of Christ is preached, and people are brought to the Father. So you have this Trinitarian theme again.
01:39:02: So just as Christ voluntarily condescends to become man and to save us, and He's eternally begotten of the
01:39:14: Father, and then He becomes incarnate to save us, and there's a matching, as it were, mirroring of the eternal relations, you see the same thing with the
01:39:23: Spirit. So now the Spirit is given by the
01:39:28: Father to the Son, even as the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, and He is poured out upon the
01:39:36: Church, and He goes forth applying the work of Christ in light of His Ascension and by virtue of it.
01:39:44: And so all of these things really trace the work of the entire Trinity through the life of Christ from incarnation, life and ministry, death, resurrection, and Ascension, all trying to bring these things to practical bearing on the
01:39:58: Christian. You know, it's interesting, in a recent debate that I organized here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the
01:40:06: Carlisle Theater between Dr. Tony Costa, a Reformed Baptist theologian and scholar who is
01:40:14: Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and my friend Robert St.
01:40:20: Genes, Dr. Robert St. Genes of Catholic Apologetics International, who was defending the
01:40:27: Catholic teaching of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The issue of the incarnation of Christ came up and Dr.
01:40:41: Costa was conveying that his sinlessness required him being conceived of the
01:40:48: Holy Spirit, and Dr. St. Genes, the Catholic, was diminishing the importance of that to basically protect the idea that the
01:41:00: Immaculate Conception of Mary, his mother, was required to preserve a sinless child.
01:41:09: Now this is really nonsensical when you think about it because that would require Mary's parents or mother being immaculately conceived and her grandmother and going back through the chain of her ancestry.
01:41:23: It doesn't make any sense to me at all, but that is a very important idea that God, the
01:41:30: Spirit, conceived the child Jesus in the womb of Mary.
01:41:36: Is it not a very primary and important part of our theology? Yeah, and you know
01:41:43: I'm a fully committed Reformed Protestant and immersed myself in classic
01:41:50: Reformed thought, but that being said, what I find interesting about what you just relayed is it reminds me how the
01:42:00: Lord has continued to speak to his church throughout the ages, including the medieval period, and the version that you gave from your
01:42:11: Reformed friend where the Spirit sanctified Christ in his mother's womb instead of a part as holy.
01:42:21: To me that sounds like Thomas Aquinas, who's the
01:42:26: Roman Catholic doctor, and the Immaculate Conception view really only began to be defended by Duns Scotus, who came after Aquinas and then became
01:42:38: Catholic dogma much later in history. So what I find interesting is, you know, you've got this
01:42:45: Catholic defense of the Immaculate Conception contrasted to a Reformed argument of the
01:42:52: Spirit setting apart Christ as holy and sanctifying him in the mother's womb, and yet you have medieval
01:42:58: Catholic authors that are basically arguing what the Reformed authors pick up later. So these things shift around, but I think it is accurate to say that Christ was a sinless human being, and his conception by the
01:43:18: Spirit in the womb of Mary ensures several things.
01:43:23: I mean, one, he has sin imputed to him, but he has no sin imparted to him.
01:43:34: He doesn't have personal sin, and he doesn't have the guilt of Adam's sin imputed to him, but what he does have is the sins of his people imputed to him.
01:43:46: In other words, he's not born with original and actual sin, and so the Spirit does sanctify his perfect humanity by setting it apart to the service of God.
01:43:57: You know, on that note, and this would open another can of worms, but John Owen actually says at one point, and this is an
01:44:06: English Congregationalist in the 17th century, not a Roman Catholic, that Adam and Eve's real fault in the
01:44:15: Garden of Eden was they stopped depending on the Holy Spirit. And why would he say that?
01:44:23: Well, what he's basically saying is perfect humanity is perfectly dependent upon God, and independent humanity is sinful if you're trying to live separate from God, and as it's the
01:44:35: Spirit who really perfects the works of God and brings us into communion with the
01:44:41: Father and the Son, Adam and Eve would have sinned if they stopped depending upon God the
01:44:46: Spirit to help them, enable them, and equip them to serve and obey God in every stage of their lives. And that's partly true because Owen's deducing that from Christ.
01:44:58: What does a perfect man look like? Well, he's filled with the Spirit and he preaches by the Spirit, he does miracles by the
01:45:04: Spirit, he walks by the Spirit, he prays by the Spirit, and that's what we see throughout the
01:45:10: New Testament. And what he's basically saying is that's what Adam was meant to be. And of course,
01:45:15: I just want to clarify that I understand that Roman Catholics do believe, obviously, that the
01:45:22: Holy Spirit conceived Christ in the womb of Mary, because they highlight the virginity of Mary.
01:45:28: I'm not trying to say that Robertson Genesis was denying that in any way, but he was seemingly undermining its importance because of his attempts to promote the
01:45:41: Immaculate Conception of Mary. A lot of people, both Catholic and Protestant, who are unschooled in what that means, think that is talking about the conception of Christ, that phrase
01:45:57: Immaculate Conception, but it's not. It's about Mary herself being conceived sinless in the womb of her mother.
01:46:07: And that, of course, we would deny as heretical and unbiblical. But perhaps we should talk about the resurrection of Christ as an important aspect of our salvation, because there seems to be such an importance on this concept that the
01:46:27: Apostle Paul would denounce anyone who would reject that idea as not having eternal life.
01:46:36: It's not just the the atoning death of Christ or the redemptive work on Calvary that is infinitely important.
01:46:45: It is also his resurrection, and if you can explain why that is such a vastly important concept. As you were saying that,
01:46:53: I was thinking about a conversation I had with a friend just yesterday, how sometimes in the
01:47:01: New Testament, say in 1 Corinthians 2, the Apostle Paul can summarize all of his preaching in terms of preaching
01:47:11: Christ and Him crucified, but then in a different context in the book of Acts, the same
01:47:19: Paul will constantly declare that he is testifying to the hope of the resurrection of the dead.
01:47:25: And the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ really become two inseparable sides of a single coin, and we can't have the one without the other.
01:47:38: And so without the death of Christ, there's no atonement and there's no substitution.
01:47:44: Christ became sin and bore the wrath and curse of God and all of its penalty for us, as well as fulfilled all the conditions of the law and His obedience.
01:47:55: But also in His resurrection, He is victorious over sin, and it has no dominion over Him in any respect, and Paul in Romans 6 then argues that that's why sin no longer has dominion over us.
01:48:13: It's not just that we've died to Christ and been freed from the condemning power of sin, but we've also been made alive with Christ, and so we are walking a new life in Him now.
01:48:30: If you wanted to put it differently, this is relating to what we call justification and sanctification, but we have to recognize that it's not as though the death is justification and the resurrection is sanctification.
01:48:48: Paul actually ties both ideas to both concepts, and just to illustrate,
01:48:54: Paul can say that He was delivered for our offenses but raised for our justification. Similarly in 1
01:49:01: Corinthians 15, if Christ is not raised from the dead, you're still in your sins.
01:49:09: And I think part of the reason behind that is that, say via 1
01:49:15: Timothy 3 .16, when Christ was raised,
01:49:21: Paul says He was justified in the Spirit. In other words, the
01:49:26: Spirit vindicated Him publicly and declared that this was the beloved
01:49:32: Son in whom God was well -pleased even though He died for His sinful people.
01:49:37: Now He's been raised and vindicated, and so we share with Christ in His death and resurrection, and we're justified.
01:49:45: Likewise, through His death and resurrection, we've died to sin and we walk in newness of life, securing our sanctification.
01:49:53: So I'm pulling together the 1 Timothy passage and Romans 4 and Romans 6 to pull all these themes together into one whole.
01:50:03: And then in terms of the resurrection, at least in the chapter, I really draw the ideas from Romans 8, where there you not simply are presented with the idea that Christ has been raised and therefore one day our bodies will be raised as well, that we may have communion with the
01:50:28: Father through the Son by the Spirit forever. That idea is present, but he also brings out the idea that he touched on in Romans 6 again in terms of what this does to us now.
01:50:40: We are alive in Christ. We're already resurrected in some sense, and this starts in the new birth.
01:50:46: But then we will be completely resurrected when our bodies are raised to the last day and our souls are perfected in glory.
01:50:56: And then also Paul stretches out the argument even to the transformation of the earth throughout
01:51:03: Romans 8. So the resurrection actually has far -reaching consequences.
01:51:09: Christ's resurrection is the first fruit of all of these other benefits, and there are benefits of the resurrection now and in the future, and there are personal benefits and cosmic benefits, and they all fit together.
01:51:23: I know already that I want you to come back to perhaps spend the whole two hours on the person and work of the
01:51:30: Holy Spirit, perhaps the most misunderstood person of the Trinity, but so let's close out the program with the ascension in its role in the belief and life of the
01:51:45: Church. It is possibly an issue that is not discussed enough.
01:51:53: I had the privilege years ago, back in the 1990s, of hearing live in person in a congregation the late
01:52:03: Dr. Greg Bonson, the master of apologetics now in glory with Christ.
01:52:10: He preached the first sermon entirely on the ascension that I had ever heard I think at that point, and it is a date on the liturgical calendar that some of our
01:52:23: Reformed Brethren celebrate. This year will be Thursday, May 25th.
01:52:29: Others within the Reformed Communion and and the Protestant Communion do not celebrate such liturgical celebrations, but at the same time still obviously affirm the importance and truth of them.
01:52:45: But what can you say before we run out of time about the ascension and its importance? I think at the outset to state the importance of the ascension as strongly as I can, if we removed the ascension of Christ, we would lose the
01:53:08: Gospel. Now, the reason why I put it that strongly is that the whole of Christ's work stands together as a piece.
01:53:19: So in other words, you don't simply have a crucified Christ, you also have an obedient Christ, and a
01:53:26: Christ who suffered throughout his life, a Christ who is incarnate and fully God and fully man in one person, a
01:53:32: Christ who is also raised, and then a Christ who is ascended, and everything that Christ did from his conception in Mary's womb up to his ascension and continuing into his present intercession to the saints in heaven is absolutely essential for the salvation of God's people.
01:53:54: And that shows you, of course, that salvation also means more than the forgiveness of sins.
01:54:01: It means that we're justified, forgiven, and counted righteous in God's sight, but it also means that we're being transformed by the
01:54:09: Spirit and renewed in God's image, and it means that we will finish that process and be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and glorified and raised with Christ in body and soul to be restored human beings.
01:54:29: And everything in Christ's life, including his ascension, has bearing on that final reality in some way, and it has present benefits too.
01:54:39: In the Scriptures and the text that I cited to pull out the Trinitarian themes, again in Acts 2, we read that, "...therefore
01:54:47: being exalted to the right hand of God, having received from the Father the promise of the Spirit, he poured out this which you now see and hear."
01:54:57: And this becomes the platform on which the whole book of Acts is built.
01:55:03: Christ ascends into heaven, and as John said in his earthly ministry, the
01:55:11: Holy Spirit was not yet given, for Jesus was not yet glorified.
01:55:17: I think that means that the Spirit wasn't active before the ascension, but it is saying that there is a close connection between the ascension of Christ and the next stage of redemptive history.
01:55:32: So when Jesus ascends into heaven, he pours forth the Spirit to spread the gospel from Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth in an unprecedented way that he's never done before.
01:55:45: And the entire application of redemption to all the elect out of every part of the world literally hinges upon the ascension of Christ and the pouring out of the
01:55:56: Spirit to bless the preaching of the gospel. There are other facets here, too. Christ goes into heaven so that he might prepare and secure a place for us.
01:56:06: Christ continues to be a high priest, and in his very presence before God, he is interceding or interposing on our behalf so that God accepts us, that his work is applied to us, not only in our hearts by the work of the
01:56:23: Spirit and through faith, but through his place for us in heaven. And so all of these things really flow from and are tied to the ascension, but the aspect that I really push in this chapter is how
01:56:37: Christ's ascension begins a new era, where, as John Murray once put it, we really live in the age of the
01:56:45: Holy Spirit, and he's poured out the Spirit so that the Spirit attends the preaching of the gospel and works in the conversion of sinners.
01:56:56: I mean, this is really why we bother to go to our prayer meetings in the local church, why we should anyway.
01:57:05: This is why we ought to be excited when we come to worship on the Lord's day, because we live in the era of the
01:57:12: Spirit or the age of the Spirit, and all of this flows from Christ's ascension into heaven. Amen.
01:57:19: It was interesting, I was within earshot of two friends of mine, both very learned
01:57:24: Reformed pastors who were having a disagreement, even though they both fully affirmed the truth and importance of the ascension.
01:57:34: They were disagreeing over whether it was required to have a complete presentation of the gospel in its core, boiled -down essence.
01:57:44: It was very interesting to see that they were disagreeing on that, even though they both fully affirmed, obviously, that truth, without which you could not be a
01:57:54: Christian. We could perhaps address that even as a part of our next discussion, but I'd like you to have you back on the program to discuss primarily the
01:58:05: Holy Spirit, since we did not have time to plumb the depths of that subject during today's program.
01:58:13: In fact, we will never have time to plumb the depths of it, but I'd like to address it at least in a much adequate and fuller fashion when we return.
01:58:23: In fact, if you could hang on the line after we go off the air so I could schedule another date to interview you,
01:58:29: I would appreciate that. Sure. Well, I know that the website for Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary is
01:58:39: GPTS .edu. GP for Greenville Presbyterian, TS for Theological Seminary, dot edu.
01:58:49: I know that the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website is AllianceNet .org.
01:58:56: AllianceNet .org. Is there any other contact information you care to share?
01:59:04: Something will probably come to me later, but those are the ones that strike me now.
01:59:10: If I may be so bold, I'd like to recommend a book written by a friend of mine, Dr. James R.
01:59:15: White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, The Forgotten Trinity, which he actually dedicated to me, and you can find out more about that book at AOMIN .org.
01:59:24: A -O -M -I -N .org. Thank you so much, brother Ryan, and I look forward to your return to Iron Sherpa's Iron.
01:59:32: Yes, thank you, Chris. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater