Simply Trinity Study (part 11)

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Simply Trinity Study (part 12)

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It's very good though, because that's exactly right, it's the idea of collapsing the economic trinity, that is what he does in history, and making it the, what's the opposite of the economic?
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Eminent, there you go. Okay, and he says, in all our excitement over the gift of revelation, a gift that gives us knowledge of our triune
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God, we might get cocky and assume that all there is to the trinity is whatever we see happen in the incarnation, i .e.
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the gospel. As if who the trinity is in and of himself is irrelevant, only to be collapsed into whatever the triune
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God does in creation and salvation, or whatever the man Christ Jesus does during his earthly ministry.
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Forget ontology, the essence of who God is, functionality is the key, say many a theologian.
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If taken to an extreme, we might also assume that the triune God's actions in salvation history do not merely reveal, but constitute the persons of the trinity in eternity.
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Either danger can be summarized in one word, conflation. Conflation is not like inflation, conflation just means combining two things.
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So he's talking about conflating or combining the economic trinity with the ontological trinity or the eminent trinity.
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In other words, who God is with what he does. We should not press those two things together, they are separate.
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Um, thoughts or questions? Okay, true or false? The gospel causes us to think more deeply about who
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God is. I hope that's true. For all our healthy focus on what
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God has done to save us, we might talk and talk and talk about our salvation and forget to talk about the gospels ultimate objection or object of adoration, the triune
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God himself. The gospel is supposed to move us beyond ourselves to know God and who he is in and of himself.
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How does it do that? How does the gospel cause us to focus on God?
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Janet? Okay. Right.
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I mean, if we just think about the gospel this way, which is what, what did
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God do for us? What did Christ do for us? You know, when we talk about the gospel, our tendency is,
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I think, probably to talk a little bit too much about ourselves and not to think enough about God.
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I mean, what is it about us that would cause God to the second person, the
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Trinity to condescend to come down to earth and save us? And the answer is, there's nothing about us that would cause us to do that, except we're pathetic and in need of help.
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And so if we view things rightly, then we think more highly of God and less highly about ourselves.
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Other thoughts? Yes. Is there a relationship between the fact that we are image bearers of God and the fact that God reaches down essentially and saves us, that he comes down in the second person of the
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Trinity, takes on human flesh, lives the perfect life we ought to have lived, dies the death that we deserve, was raised on the third day?
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Is there something to do with the image bearer aspect of that that motivates
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God? What do you think? Anthony?
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Okay. Because he made us, we're image bearers. Yes. And that, what's that?
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Right. It's his choice. Well, I think we could go, you were going to say something,
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John? Thinking about that, God pretty much, or the Bible pretty much never talks about God's motivation.
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Yeah, certainly to glorify himself, and you know, compassion, empathy, those kind of things.
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But let's just follow this string out just a little bit.
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Why is it that God does not condescend, leave his glory, and come down to save raccoons or dolphins or porcupines?
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They don't need to be saved. They don't have souls.
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They're not image bearers. So in that respect alone, right, we would understand God made us in his image.
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And then, you know, let's just make it simple. God made Adam and Eve in his image.
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They rebelled against him. They fell. They needed saving.
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And thus starts the whole rescue plan. I mean, we could go to Genesis 3 .15. While God's pronouncing a curse on Eve, he says that, or actually on Satan, he says that, you know,
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Satan would bruise the seed of the woman's heel, and the seed of the woman, namely
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Jesus, would crush Satan's head. So right from the beginning, essentially, we have that plan to redeem mankind.
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And it has to do with the image. So yeah, I think that's right. Other thoughts? Okay. Yeah, he did it for his good pleasure.
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Yes. Yeah, he does whatever he pleases. Okay. Number 17, we've been talking about this.
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So it should be fairly simple. What is the difference between the ontological trinity and the economic trinity?
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Don't let the big words fool you or scare you. What does it mean? The whatness, yes.
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And so if I, you know, you're on the right track here. What is the difference between the ontological trinity?
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Well, let's just define what the ontological trinity is. If it's the whatness, then what does that mean?
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Yes. So it is who God is versus what he does.
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Ontological, who he is versus economic, what he does.
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Imminent trinity refers to what our triune God is in eternity apart from the created order.
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In other words, if nothing had ever been, had ever come to pass, it was just God. God is unchanged.
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This is who he is. Sometimes the imminent trinity is called the ontological trinity, so it's the same.
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That's the study of being, you know, just the essence of being. Ontology refers to the study of being.
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In this case, God's being, that is his essence or nature. To refer to the imminent trinity, then, is to refer to who he is internally according to himself, etc.
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Economic trinity, however, refers to how this triune God acts toward the created order.
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So I mean, you could essentially say, well, it would be very difficult to define the economic trinity if he hadn't created because we wouldn't really, we would have no idea what he's doing because we wouldn't exist.
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So all right, number 18, true or false? Many orthodox teachers conflate or confuse the ontological, again, who
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God is, and the economic trinity, what he does. Conflate or confuse, true or false?
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Okay, so we have a true from the back row, Baptists. Let's survey the front row
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Presbyterians. Many orthodox teachers conflate or confuse the, well, man,
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I wish that wasn't true. That there were none.
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Now I did put many, so let's just say many orthodox teachers. So John is technically correct, and we'll give that a false, which is what the highlighter said anyway, so.
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The occasionally inspired highlighter says that question is false, and it is false. Some do, but most orthodox do not.
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We dare not think who this triune God is in and of himself can be reduced to his external actions in history, actions that may even be temporary.
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If we do, we may impose human limitations or characteristics on God himself. He gives the example of Moltmann.
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Anytime you hear a German name, you should, like, hold your breath because we're about to go into heresy. Moltmann looks at the cross and assumes that if the son suffers in his humanity, not only must he suffer in his divinity, but the whole trinity suffers as well.
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God was crucified and God died. What's wrong with that line of thinking?
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God can't die, okay? Anybody want to expand on that?
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God doesn't suffer. Okay, death is a change.
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God can't change. If we just think about it this way, who remembers the fancy -schmancy diagram with the triangle and the rectangle attached to it?
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Right there. That idea of consubstantiality matters, right?
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We just think about Jesus in his humanity, I mean, represented by the rectangle, whatever that means.
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Did you think about yourself as a rectangle? Separate.
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There's no mixing between Jesus, second person of the trinity, and Jesus the man.
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Those two natures do not mix. So when Jesus the man is on the cross,
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Jesus the man suffers. Jesus the man dies. Jesus God does not suffer.
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Jesus God does not die. He says,
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Maltman has collapsed, combined, conflated the imminent and the economic, allowing the humanity of Christ during the incarnation to define and determine the deity of the entire trinity in eternity.
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He ultimately confuses the whole thing. Then he says, or consider
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EFSers, is what I put there. What's EFS?
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Eternal Functional Subordination. What does that mean, Ben? For 25 points.
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Okay, it means that Jesus is less than the Father, and it means that from all eternity,
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Jesus was subordinate to the Father. We've talked about that.
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What's the major problem with that? There's more than one will.
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In order to be subordinate, in order to be submissive, then there has to be some kind of difference in ideas, some kind of difference in wills, so you wind up well on your way, if not to tritheism, meaning three gods, at least you're on the road to three gods.
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Okay, or consider EFSers who look at the Son's submission to the Father during the incarnation, which is for the purpose of salvation, that's why he did it, and then assume that the
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Son must be subordinate to the Father's authority in eternity too, even within the imminent trinity.
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So, if we think about God before anything is created, some theologians, including
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Wayne Grudem and others, have posited this idea that Jesus was eternally, functionally subordinate to the
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Father. The Father's authority, they say, was supreme in eternity past, and the
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Son's inferiority defines who the Son is, because they say, in order to be a son, you have to be a father.
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Every son, I've even read recently, I won't even name this man, but somebody who said the essence of being a son is to be less than the father, right?
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No son is greater than his father, he has to obey his father, etc. So that's the idea, eternally.
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But Barrett says, creatures are derivative, dependent beings, but not the creator.
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If we collapse the imminent, who God is, and what he does, if we combine those, we compromise this key difference between the creator and the creature.
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We combine, essentially, Christ, deity, and his creature level, his humanity, and we forfeit
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God's satiety, meaning he can't change, because now he's taken on this additional nature as God.
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Okay, thoughts or questions before we move on? Yes, I see that hand. Yes? Okay.
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Who wants to answer that? Okay. It's the man,
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Christ Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, it's not deity to deity, we're not looking behind the curtain at the inner
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Trinitarian communications. This is the man, Christ Jesus, our representative, the second
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Adam, praying to the Father, and saying, not my will, because humanly,
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I don't want to do this. Not my will, but your will.
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Or you know, to put it in King James, thy will. I'm sure that's how he was praying to King James.
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Does that help? Yes, and therefore he would have to submit his will to the will of the
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Father, something that Adam did not do.
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Okay, thoughts or questions before we move on? All right, number 19, what, who wrote this?
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What is the difference between opera ad intra and opera ad extra? There's got to be a wag or two out here, uh -huh, uh -huh, that's not bad, but you know,
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I was looking for something more like, you know, opera ad intra is, you know, singing in your home, and opera ad extra is singing at the park.
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Just another term for economic and, for eminence and economic, yeah, that's pretty smart, yes.
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In fact, I meant to turn this into a handout, and I will here in a couple weeks, we won't be,
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I won't be here next week, because I'll be suffering for the Lord in California, probably getting more snow,
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I had to love it, you know, I've got, I've got an unbelieving earth worshipping friend who lives in Vermont, and, you know, he's been tracking all the temperatures and all that, you know, up in Vermont, it's warmer, it's warmer, it's warmer, and I'm going, okay.
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They've got blizzard warnings in Los Angeles, so don't, don't get too carried away with the fact that it's warmer in Vermont.
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The last time they had blizzard warnings in Los Angeles, I think I read it was 1989, so doesn't happen very often.
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Yeah, but it's pretty rare, and, you know, the point is, don't think the world's going to boil away, you know, climate change is kind of part of the whole deal.
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It might get cold in Los Angeles, who knows? Yeah, it has happened before, and it'll happen again.
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What is the difference between those two things? Well, it is exactly what Gary said, it's just another way of describing eminence and economic, and I have this chart of them.
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So eminence would include opera ad intra, if you just think about it, intra meaning within the
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Trinity. There's also internal operations is another way of saying it, triune
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God and of himself, the eternal life of the triune God. God, another truth about the eminence is it cannot be exhausted by the economic, meaning no matter what
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God does, that doesn't change who he is. And the last one here on this chart is the hidden depths of God fully known only by God, which is interesting in and of itself, because what does that mean, you know, in heaven means that we will never fully know
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God. So I'll give this to you, I have some other things that I wanted to put together in a handout. And then on the other side of this chart,
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I typed it from the book, so on the other side is economic, which is opera ad extra.
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So if you just think of extra as something outside of the Trinity, then you're on the right track there.
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External operations or missions, triune God in relation to creation, how he operates in creation, and then
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God's acts in history, creation, providence, and redemption and reveals something true about the eminence, about who he is.
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It tells us what he does, tells us something about who he is, but it doesn't exhaust who he is.
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And it's revealed by God's mighty acts and words. Okay, so that's number 19, the difference.
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Again, just eminence and economic, there we go.
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Number 20, true or false, understanding who God is helps us to understand what he does, and I just said that, so it is true.
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He says there may be wisdom in using a far more specific vocabulary like relations and missions.
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Remember, the eminent Trinity refers to who God is in himself, the one
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God, who is distinguished as three persons by his eternal relations of origin alone, and we're going to talk more about those, but what are they?
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Eternal relations of origins, it's kind of like review, but we have to review a lot because these are hard things to remember.
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Eternal relations of origins, that'd be another chart I should probably type up. The father is unbegotten, the son is eternally begotten, right?
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And the spirit is spirated, okay? These eternal relations of origin, and these relations alone explain the internal and eternal ordering or processions of the
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Trinity, paternity, affiliation, and spiration, affiliation being a fancy word for sonship.
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But they also explain the external and temporal missions of the Trinity. In other words, knowing who they are tells us something about what they do.
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For example, it is because the father begets his son in eternity that it is fitting for the father to send his son to become incarnate in history, and it is because the father and the son together spirate the spirit in eternity that it is fitting for the father and the son to send or give the spirit in history.
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And he says, but let's be very clear to avoid conflation. Begetting and spirating in eternity are not the same thing as sending and giving in salvation history.
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Begetting and spirating are eternal and internal, and the other two are temporal.
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In other words, they happen in history. Thoughts, questions. Key point there is what
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God does tells us something about who he is eternally. Number 21.
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What God does makes plain the nature of the Trinity. That's so close.
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It sounds true, but it's false. Barak goes on, he says, in summary, the temporal missions, what
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God does in time, the sending of the son and the giving of the spirit, can reveal the eternal relations of origin, but the temporal missions in no way constitute the eternal relations of origin.
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In other words, don't confuse the two. We'll talk more about it, but number 22.
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True or false, the New Testament writers focus on the actions of Jesus, not his eternal origins.
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In other words, they focus on what he does in history, not his eternal origins or his deity.
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That's false. It sounds true, but it's false. The biblical authors are not so focused on the historical facts, in other words, what he does of the life of Christ, that they are unconcerned with his eternal origins.
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His eternal Trinitarian origin prior to the incarnation. For example, if I say to you, what's the focus of the
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Gospel of John? It is the deity of Christ.
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So in other words, even though we know that the Gospel of John lays out plenty of things that Jesus did during his earthly ministry, it also tells us about his eternal nature.
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Yeah, John 1 .1 in the beginning, right? So that one is false, even though it kind of feels like it should be true, it's false.
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Number 23, true or false, there was never a time when the
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Father did not have his word. How many negatives can you put in one sentence?
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That's a good point. There was never a time when, well, it's only two, but see, the trick here is if you just take the negatives out, then what do you have?
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No, I mean, just take it out and try to read it. There was a time when the
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Father did have his word. The original statement is a little bit better.
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Thank you, John. Thank you very much. Okay, but that, you know, here's the question.
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If we eradicate the, excuse me, the word time, then we don't even have a question.
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Listen, okay, and what would you say the answer to that is? Ever, okay, say your question again, and let's see what the crowd says.
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Ever since there has been time, God has had his word. Sounds like he didn't have it before, or it opens up that possibility, right?
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Okay, yeah, that's right, that's why Steve writes these questions. All right, the answer is true, okay?
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There was never a time when the Father did not have his word. Why? Because the word is eternally begotten, right?
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The nature of a father is to beget.
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He has a son. There was never a time, even before time, before there was any time, time, time.
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God has always, I mean, there are some things that are, you know, again, the whole concept of a time without time, it's kind of nonsensical, and that's what we have to wrestle with.
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So for better or worse, I like to argue that time is not really a, like we experience it, this linear kind of journey that we're on.
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Some people are like, it's a journey. But time is more of, from God's perspective, time is a creation, and I would say,
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I would argue that time is a location, essentially, to God. That may not work perfectly, but essentially,
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I think that's right. Because he's able to see the beginning from the end, declare the beginning from the end, and so move and everything that providentially nothing catches him off guard.
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Why? Because he's outside of time. So this question, in that sense, is kind of nonsense, but it helps us as human beings, as created beings, to sort of grapple with it a little bit.
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It would be impossible to formulate it without kind of the idea of time. So anyway, the answer is true.
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Yes. See, this is the kind of question I'm sure Marcus heard at school.
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He writes a true or false question, and the kids are what? Looking for a loophole, right?
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Is there any way we can get this question to the false category so that we can't miss it?
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I think the intent of the question is pretty clear, so I'm going to rule against that, against the written word concept.
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And, you know, here we have Matthew Barrett's words. Before all ages, there was
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God and nothing else. Before the cosmos existed, there was God and him alone.
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Except alone may sound as if he was lonely. He was not. For in the beginning, says
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John, was the word. Not the written word, but the
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Son of God. John's way of referring to the Son. Co -eternal, this word was with God.
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Co -equal, this word was God. It's hard to more closely identify the word with God than this.
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He was co -equal with God as the one who was God himself. Never was there a time when the
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Father was without his word. I think that's pretty clear. Thank you, Mr. Barrett. Okay, but I get your point.
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Nice try. Number 24. True or false?
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Of the triune God, only Jesus sustains life on earth. Guess maybe we could say, you know, of the
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Godhead or of the members of the Godhead. That's the idea. Only Jesus sustains life on earth.
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True, false? Yes, no, maybe? Okay, now that is very interesting.
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We do say they have different functions. Why do we say that? I'll leave that for a moment.
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We'll come back to it. Here's what Barrett says. Through the word, God created the cosmos ex nihilo, which means out of nothing.
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There was no pre -existing material that God reorganized.
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To clarify, it's not the word who is created out of nothing. The world is created out of nothing by the word.
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The word is not created along with creation, nor is the word created prior to the rest of creation.
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If the word is created before the rest of creation, what is that? It's Arianism, Patrick.
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Right? That's who, that's Jesus as the, I can't resist the Patrick thing. That's Jesus as the first created being, and then he creates everything else, which is false.
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But what about what John said? That specific members of the
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Trinity have specific roles, essentially, is what you said, right? Okay.
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So, Jesus creates, or Jesus sustains, or Jesus does both.
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We can see that in Colossians 1. Does the
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Father do that as well? And God, and God, and God, and the spirits hovering over the waters.
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Areopagus, or as we like to say, Mars Hill, which is the same thing. Are there passages that indicate the
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Holy Spirit gives life? The answer is yes.
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I can't, I can't really think of one off the top of my head. I think there's one in Job where it talks about the
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Spirit giving life. Here's the point. And Barrett makes this in the book, and it goes counter to kind of what we're, how we're used to thinking, which is the persons of the
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Godhead. If I say that Jesus is the creator, that's true. But Fathers, the
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Father also creates. The Spirit also creates. So, we're going to see this in the next chapter.
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The Bible highlights what certain persons of the
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Trinity are doing in specific areas. But, for example, is the
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Holy Spirit sanctify? Is he the only one who sanctifies?
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Can you think of areas that overlap that you can plainly see? Okay, the resurrection.
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Who raised Jesus from the dead? The Father, Son, and the
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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit did. Are there other areas where they overlap?
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Creation, definitely. I mean, and here's the point.
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And the point will become a little bit more specific, a little clearer in the next chapter.
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There's nothing that the Father does that the Son doesn't do, and the Spirit doesn't do. There's nothing that the Son does in his deity that the
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Father doesn't do, and the Spirit doesn't do. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, why are they seemingly, at some points, aside different roles?
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Why is that? And I think that's all it is.
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I think it's just an emphasis in particular areas. I mean, if you want to, let's say, for the sake of argument, that God is the author of Scripture.
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Would he not want, as a triune being, to highlight the fact that there are three persons, and each of them is
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God? And I think the answer is yes. And yet, there's that underlying truth that what?
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There's one God. So, God in three persons. One God, three persons.
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And that's kind of, we see that throughout Scripture. It's just kind of, and it develops.
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But it's interesting to watch that. But we have to close here. Yeah, Charlie, go ahead. I'm sorry, did you say there was no part of the second person?
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Or was that? Yeah, I mean, there is that kind of, there is some of that teaching where we call it the, what is it?
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The laying, what's the technical word for laying aside of his, exercise of his attributes?
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Yeah, but you don't know what I mean, because you're not giving me the word. It's, what is it?
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Kenosis. Thank you. You know, that the psalm that goes, emptied himself of all but love.
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That's a kenosis with a vengeance, right? I mean, that's just kind of, did he do that? Did Jesus lay aside all of his attributes and just say,
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I'm just going to, you know, the only attribute I have left here on earth, in my divine person, is love?
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No, because he didn't leave, he left heaven in some sense, but he didn't leave in the ultimate sense, right?
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He came to earth, but he didn't stop being in heaven at the same time. So, anyway, we need to, we need to close.
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Father, thank you for this time this morning, for these mind -stretching truths, difficult to grasp and help us to just remind ourselves again and again, that you are beyond our capacity to fully comprehend.
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But Lord, that you have condescended in written word, so that we might know you.
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And also, you've given us gifts throughout the century. Men, gifted in understanding your word and interpreting it, that we might know you, the living and true