Simply Trinity (part 15)

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Simply Trinity (part 16)

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misrepresent the trinity. I'm reading my answer here and trying to decide whether I like it or not.
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To confess Jesus as true God from true God is to misrepresent the trinity.
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Thank you very much, it is. The answer is false. It's not to misrepresent the trinity, it's to present the trinity correctly.
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The church fathers who wrote the Nicene Creed used it as well. That phrase, true
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God from true God. For example, the Nicene Creed says, we believe in one
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Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time.
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So, true God from true God, or begotten from the Father before all time.
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Easy one. I'm sure they'll get even more simple as we move along.
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Number 11. Any questions, comments, concerns? Heresies you'd like to get rid of?
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Okay. Number 11. True or false? Because of the economy, because of economy of operation within the trinity, if the
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Son is generated, all the persons of the trinity are generated. That's false.
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It's not even a good one. Come on, that's not even tricky. He writes, generation alone is what distinguishes the
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Son as Son. There is not some other concept or function or activity in the trinity that distinguishes the person of the
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Son from the Father. Furthermore, generation alone, I mean I like that, alone, is what distinguishes the
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Son as the Son. There is not, oh, that's just another copy of that thing.
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But because without generation, not only is there no Son, but there is no trinity.
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Now that's tricky. Without generation, there is no trinity. As John Gill warns, without his eternal generation, no proof can be made of his being a distinct person in the
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Godhead. Without generation, we fall headfirst into Sabellianism, which means, what's
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Sabellianism? Modalism, Patrick.
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You don't have to have the Patrick, it's okay. For what previously distinguished the
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Son from the Father is dissolved. And as a result, the persons are conflated. That is to say, they're merged together.
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Until there is no plurality of persons at all. You have one God and three modes, basically.
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So we're back to modalism. Now, number 12 is going to be much more difficult.
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You can tell it's much more difficult because it's not a true or false. Number 12, when is the
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Son generated by the Father? Exactly what
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I said. When is the Son generated? What do I mean by when? How many of you can't define when?
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Only John. He must have majored in philosophy, the poor. When is the
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Son generated by the Father? Well, yeah.
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Here, listen to what Barrett says, because John was actually on to something, not on something.
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But on to something, when he asked that question, Barrett says,
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That's a trick question if there ever was one. There is no when.
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Then he asks why. The short answer is that our triune God is eternal.
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He is not bound by time, but is timeless. He has no beginning. A succession of moments cannot apply to Him.
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He just is. That means the following question is most relevant. Well, whereas when is the
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Son generated by the Father is not relevant, because that's just a trick question, and there is no when to it.
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This question does matter. If God is timelessly eternal, what does that mean for the
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Son and His generation from the Father? If God is timelessly eternal, what does that mean for the
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Son and His generation from the Father? You can't say when.
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No, you can't say that's when it happened. No. The answer is unlike human generation, the
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Son's generation is eternal. Eternal generation. There never was a time when the
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Son was not, nor ever a time when the Son was not from the Father.
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And we have a lot of trouble with that concept, because as we've said on many occasions, we are creatures, and we think in a creaturely fashion.
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We think in an orderly fashion. We think in terms of our own, starts with an
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EX. We think in terms of our own experience, right? We try to cram everything that we know into what we've experienced.
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So when we talk about God, we think, okay, well, He's like us in that, you know, the
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Son is born. There was a time when He didn't exist, and then there's a time when
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He did exist. Wrong. Barrett goes on to say, he says, or as fathers like Gregory of Nysa, Nysa.
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He was Nysa than others. Okay, sorry. It's probably Nysa, like to say there is no, quote, some time for the
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Son, because He was not generated in time. He exists by generation indeed, but nevertheless,
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He never begins to exist, just like the Father never begins to exist.
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The difference between the Father and the Son is, the Son is eternally generated. Well, what does that mean?
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It means that there never was a time that He exists, but He's generated by the Father. How do we explain that?
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Just like we did. Can we fully grasp it? No. Thoughts, questions, concerns, heresies?
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Okay. Number 13, true or false? Generation within God is unlike any other.
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This is like a corollary of the previous one, which makes sense, because if you're going through the book, you're going to follow the logic of the author.
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Generation within God, in other words, the Father generating the Son, is unlike any other, meaning like unlike any other generation.
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So that is true. The answer is true. If the
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Son's generation did fall within time, then not only was there a time when the Son was not, but there was a time when the
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Father was not Father. There's a reason why the song goes, Eternal Father is strong to save, right?
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He's eternal. And we have an eternal Son as well. And if there was a time when the
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Father was not, then there was a time when the Trinity was not. And that cannot happen.
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If there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time when the Trinity was not. Again, can't happen. If there was a time when the
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Holy Spirit did not exist, then there was a time when the Trinity did not exist. As Athanasius points out, if the
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Son is not proper offspring of the Father's essence, but of nothing has come to be, then of nothing the triad consists.
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And once there was not a triad, but a monad, in other words, at one point there was not a triunity, but a singular
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God who split. And that is false. Number 14, can someone be generated and eternal?
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Can someone be generated and eternal? If not, why not? If yes, why yes?
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Can someone be generated and eternal? Okay.
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Yes, because we just said Jesus is eternal, and he's generated. Barrett says that may sound like a contradiction.
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How can someone be generated? And again, this goes back to what I was saying earlier.
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We try to cram everything that we learn, and everything that we hear, into our own experience, and we think, okay, when
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I think about a generator, what does it do? It takes fuel, and it turns it into electricity.
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How can someone be generated and eternal? It only sounds like a contradiction, because we only know generation within the experience of our own finitude.
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Finitude, which is a fun word. Finitude meaning our own limitations, right?
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Our own experience. For the infinite, timelessly eternal deity, the confines of our finitude do not apply.
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We often say what? We're trying to, we, who are creatures, are trying to understand the creator.
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We, who are finite, are trying to understand the infinite, and there are limitations to how much we can understand.
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He says, let's not forget that whatever words are used of God, even scriptural words and metaphors, let me say that again, even truths from scripture, this is
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God we have in view, infinite and eternal, immutable and everlasting. So when we, even when we apply scripture to help us understand, as Steve Meister said a couple weeks ago, scripture, all scripture is what?
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It's an accommodation to us. It's God speaking to us in a way that we can grasp, but it doesn't give us the fullness of God.
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And he says this, Barrett does, language is, by definition, analogical.
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In other words, it relates in every way. It's a concept trying to be explained in words.
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The metaphor must then be adapted to the incomprehensible one, not vice versa.
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In other words, we don't define God by words. He is, and then we try to explain him or define him by the words that we have.
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So too would generation. As Augustine says, since the generation of the son is eternal, quote, one exists, not as before the other, but as from the other.
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The son is not generated after the father, which would make him less than the father, but the son is generated from the father and from all eternity.
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And again, these are, these are difficult things for us to grasp. So we have to just say them and go, okay,
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I can't fully understand that, but this is the truth. Number 15.
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What is an implication of Jesus being the truth? John 14, six.
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I am the truth or I'm the way of the truth in life, right? No one comes to the father, but through me, what is an implication of Jesus being the truth?
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Barrett writes, scripture refers to the son's eternal origin from the father with a variety of metaphors and titles, including radiance image, wisdom, word, and ancient of days.
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But when we consider now is truth, as Jesus himself says, he is the truth.
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Now he goes on to say, was there ever a time when God was without his truth?
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No, but the Aryans, the
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Aryans being those who said that Jesus is what? A cup of coffee.
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That's what you're thinking about right now. What's that? Created. Yes. Arius, you know, from whom the
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Aryans draw their name, said that Jesus was a created being, the greatest of all created beings, but a created being nonetheless.
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So with a look of terror on his face, theoretically, Athanasius ponders this bizarre scenario.
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Listen, this is from Athanasius. For if the son was not, in other words, if he didn't exist before his generation, truth was not always in God, because Jesus says what?
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I am the way, the truth. He says, it is a sin to say such a thing.
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Athanasius concludes. So to say that Jesus is a created being is to say that there was a time when the truth did not exist.
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God did not have the truth, and therefore it would be sinful. It's sinful on a number of levels to say that Jesus is created, but that's one of them.
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Now, if you've read the book, how many have read the book? Zero. Okay, well, we're selling a lot of copies of it.
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Just nobody's reading it. How many marks of unhealthy generation are there? Unhealthy.
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I mean, there are many unhealthy in this generation, but that's not what we're talking about. How many marks of unhealthy generation he's talking about with regard to the
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Son, with regard to Jesus. How many marks are there? And John Gild notes these. Nine marks, which is where the nine marks ministry comes from.
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No. First, first division of nature, meaning that the
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Father divided his essence. That would be a wrong view. Multiplication of essence, that when the
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Son begets, or when the Father begets the Son, there's a multiplication of the essence of God.
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Wrong. Priority, meaning that the
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Father is greater than the Son in the divine sense. No. There are several others.
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I won't go through them. Motion, mutation, alteration, corruption, diminution, to lesson.
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In other words, when the Father begets the Son, there is less of the divine essence than the
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Father. And cessation from operation. Those are the nine.
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Mark those down. We'll talk more about some of them as we move along. No. 17, true or false, multiplication of the divine essence is involved in generating the
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Son. I just gave that answer. It's false. No multiplication of the divine essence is involved in the generation of the
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Son. When the Father begets, He communicates the one simple divine essence to His Son, but He does not multiply the divine essence.
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If He did, there would no longer be one simple essence, but two essences.
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Likewise, when we say the Son is begotten, we do not mean He receives from the
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Father the divine essence in part, but in whole.
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God doesn't divide up the essence and go, okay, one third for the Son, one third for the
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Spirit, and I'll keep one third for me. He gives one third to...
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No. He gives 100 % to the Son and 100 % to the Spirit. You say, well, how does that work?
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You cannot divide the essence. That is correct. There's no multiplication. There's no division. There's no subtraction.
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There's no addition. It is the divine essence. Barrett writes, think of it this way,
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God is not triple or triplex, but trinitary.
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He doesn't multiply. He just is in His three persons. Number 18.
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True or false, the Son receives from the Father what He the Father received from His Father. The old grandpa.
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What's that, John? Yeah, that's what it's saying.
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The Father has a Father. That is false. you know, why would somebody even come up with that idea?
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We can't imagine something being without having a source. So we think, well, the Father had to come from somewhere, so maybe
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He had a Father and that Father had a Father and so on and so on and so on. Next thing you know, we're communing with Joseph Smith.
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We become Mormons because that's what they believe. There is a problem with that, of course, which is there has to be a starting point to all that.
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Barrett says, As mentioned, the Son does not receive what the Father received from His Father since the Father has no
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Father Himself. It does not follow, however, that the Son is born out of nothing.
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In other words, that He's created out of nothing as the Aryans insisted. They say that Jesus is created.
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False. He goes on to say, If He was, if Jesus was created, then
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He would be no different from the rest of creation, which was made by God out of nothing.
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But the Son is no creature. Yes, He is begotten, but He is not made. Again, going back to Nicaea, as Michael said earlier.
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Let's not confuse the two. Rather than the Son being born out of nothing, says
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Aquinas, He is born out of the substance of the Father, which again is to say, eternally generated.
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Aquinas goes on to say, Necessarily then, the Father in begetting the Son did not pass on part of His nature to the
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Son, but bestowed the whole nature upon Him, with the only distinction based on origin remaining.
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In other words, the difference between the Father and the Son is, the Father begets the Son, and the
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Son is begotten by the Father. That's the difference between the two of them. Since God is not made up of parts, it's not as if eternal generation involves a portion of the
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Divine Essence being broken off. In other words, again, we're back to, it's not subtracting from the
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Divine Essence. The Nicene Creed says, The Son is true God from true
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God. We said that earlier. The Son's existence did not take its beginning out of nothing, but went forth from the eternal.
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It is appropriate to still call it a birth, that is the meaning of begetting, but it would be false to call it a beginning.
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As Turretin says, the same numerical and singular essence can nevertheless be communicable to more than one, because it is infinite.
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Again, kind of mind -boggling. All of the essence of God, all of the
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Divine Essence resides in the Father, all of it resides in the Son, all of it resides in the
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Spirit. Number 20. Even though He is the
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Eternal Son, Jesus does not have to reach, let me make sure
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I read this right, Jesus does not have to reach His full potential. Not really sure what that means.
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I think what it means is, let me interpret my own question. I think what it means is,
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Jesus is not, there's no ceiling that Jesus needs to hit.
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He's not going to improve, in other words. Well, why is that?
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Because even though He is the Eternal Son, Eternal Son doesn't mean
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He's deficient, doesn't mean He's juvenile, doesn't mean He's less than the
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Father. Barrett writes this, he says, The Father begets His Son, not as a new moment in time, not as a new moment in time, but from eternity, to say, as the
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Nicene Fathers did, over against the Arians, those who said He was created, that there never was a time when the
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Son was not, is also to confess that there never was a time when the Son was not immutable.
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In other words, He has that same divine attribute of God, He cannot change.
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If He was not begotten out of the eternal, immutable nature of the Father, then we would be right to ask whether something is lacking in God, whether God Himself is incomplete and imperfect.
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If Jesus, in other words, if Jesus in His divine nature, if He could change, if He could grow, if He could improve, then what would that say about the
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Father who generated Him? That maybe He could improve, that maybe
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He could grow, that maybe there are things that He doesn't know. So, we're going to see that He is the perfect image of the
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Father. Let me finish chapter 6, number 21, true or false, because we are adopted in Christ, our sonship is exactly like that of Jesus.
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We're taken out of the family of Satan, as it were, taken out of the children of darkness, transferred into the kingdom of light, into the kingdom of His dear
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Son, the Father's dear Son. So, is our sonship exactly like that of Jesus?
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Let me get a drink while you ponder that. I hear a no, which
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I guess would translate to false. We don't have divine essence.
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Barrett says this, he says, only if He is the Son of the Father by nature can we boldly approach the throne of grace, the
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Father by grace. Then he says, what's the difference between the Son's sonship and our sonship?
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His sonship is by nature, right? He has that divine essence.
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He's eternally begotten from the Father. Whereas our sonship is by grace, right?
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Adoption, yes. As Hilary of Portiers says,
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I want to say it like Sidney Poitier. So, as Hilary of Portiers says, for He is
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God's true and own Son by origin and not by adoption, not by name only, but in truth, born and not created.
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The nature -grace distinction also affects how we define love. Is Christ the
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Son because the Father loves Him or does the Father love Him because He is
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His Son? The latter must be true if He is the
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Son by nature from eternity rather than adopted as Son at some point in time by grace only to be loved thereafter.
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He is not the Son because beloved, says Turreton, but beloved because He is the
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Son. Beloved because He is the Son from all eternity.
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Okay, now. Y 'all are ready for chapter 7, allegedly.
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I hope we have enough there. If not, I have one copy up here which
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I will multiply. Number 1.
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True or false, eternal generation, which is the act of the
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Father eternally generating the Son as we've been talking about, is necessary to successfully...
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and there you go, my English just completely got drop -kicked through the goalpost of life.
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Eternal generation is necessary to successfully argue for the Trinity. A little typo there.
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I mean, word gives me enough problems, but I can't even say, Hey, Steve, that's wrong. Nope, can't do that.
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Eternal generation is necessary to successfully argue for the Trinity. True or false?
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In other words, let's take away eternal generation. Let's say it doesn't exist. Can you still have a Trinity? Let's say that Jesus is a created being.
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Can you still have a Trinity? Why not? What's that?
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Would not be equal. I like that answer. I think that's good. Okay. At some point, there wasn't a
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Trinity. Good answer. John Gill says this. He says eternal generation is the distinguishing criterion of the
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Christian religion. Without this, the doctrine of the Trinity can never be supported.
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Never. That's a long time. Number two. True or false?
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God does not rest on the Sabbath. God does not rest on the Sabbath.
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I'm bobbing. I'm weaving. I heard a true.
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I hear a true and false, which is to say, I need more coffee.
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He doesn't need to rest. Okay. But doesn't it say?
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So close. Becky said on the sixth day, he rested, which I guess he took the day off when he was creating man and woman.
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But anyway, I'm sorry. It was a slip. It was because I knew I know what she means.
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God does not rest on the Sabbath. I heard a false. I heard a false.
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Okay. It just says, you know, whoever the clown was who wrote this said
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God does not rest on the Sabbath. And then the inspired highlighter says true.
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So let's read and discover why that may be true. He created the heavens and the earth and then rested on the seventh day.
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Aha. So it's false. It does rest. But since he is
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God, he alone can sustain the universe and he alone has the right to do so on the
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Sabbath. In other words, did he rest on the Sabbath? As it says, you know, do you rest on the seventh day?
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Yes. But in what sense? He stopped creating.
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He was done with that. But he can't stop sustaining because if he does that, then, you know, you take
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Sunday off, you come back to work on Monday, you have to start all over again. Right? We'd see the creation thing constantly being redone.
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That's not what happens. Since he's God, he alone can sustain the universe and he alone has the right to do so on the
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Sabbath. That is his prerogative. I want you to turn to John chapter 5. John chapter 5.
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And honestly, reading this chapter, maybe we want to preach John all over again. So when
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Jesus said that his father is working until now and so is he, and that's in John 5 .17,
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Jesus answered them, my father is working until now and I am working. What was he doing there?
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What was he justifying? Healing someone on the
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Sabbath. In fact, let's read that account. After this, there was a feast of the
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Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool in Aramaic called
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Bethesda, which has five roofed culminates. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed.
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One man there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him,
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Do you want to be healed? The sick man answered him, Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I am going, another steps down before me.
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In other words, they had this tradition, this understanding that if you got into the water at a certain point when the water got stirred up, you would be healed.
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And he's like, I'm helpless to do that. Jesus said to him,
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Get up. Take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed and took up his bed and walked.
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Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed,
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It is the Sabbath and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed. But he answered them,
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The man who healed me, that man said to me, Take up your bed and walk. They asked him,
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Who is the man who said to you, Take up your bed and walk. Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place.
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Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you are well.
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Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the
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Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting
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Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them,
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My father is working until now and I am working. Next verse.
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This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the
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Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father. And here's the killer, making himself equal with God.
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Time and time again, Jesus said things that told the
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Jews exactly who he was and they understood it and it enraged them.
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I want you to read or listen as I read what Barrett wrote.
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He's got this imaginary character and if you're not reading the book, I really do encourage you because I'm reading this and I've talked through John and I've read this,
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I don't even know how many times and as I'm listening, you know, as I'm reading it in my mind because I do listen when
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I'm reading because I read audibly kind of, you know, without speaking the words,
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I hear it. It slows me down, but I do it anyway. So just imagine being there as Zipporah Zipporah walks us through this, this imaginary character.
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The Jews were ready to kill him, Jesus that is, and not just ready, they were tracking
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Jesus down, looking for the right opportunity. I know because I was there. I saw them.
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Here's what happened. I was walking home and as usual, I passed by the pool called
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Bethesda, the pool where the blind and paralyzed lingered. They believe that if they get into the pool, when the water stirs, they might just be healed.
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I don't enjoy passing by this pool. It can be depressing. Seeing so many crippled people with little hope.
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I know people have been there since they were children. Nothing changes. But one day, something did change.
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Jesus walked up to the pool, turned and made eye contact with a crippled man, a man
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I'd seen at the pool for 38 years now. With a word, Jesus commanded him to get up and walk.
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I laughed to myself, but to my shock, the man stood up and started walking.
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The woman to my left, who knew me from synagogue, shouted in disbelief, did you just see that zebra?
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I know that man. He's been lying there for, well, forever. Look at him.
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He's walking. But when I turned to the man on my right, a rabbi in training,
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I discovered that he was not in awe, but outraged. Puzzled, I asked him why.
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He gave me a heated response. Because it's the
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Sabbath. Don't you know the law? Jesus is breaking the Sabbath, telling this man to pick up his bed and walk.
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But I thought to myself, doesn't this miss the whole point of the law?
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Yes, rest. Yes, take a break from your cares and your worries and your regular workday.
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But to fail to do good on the Sabbath, because that would be work.
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And if we think about Jesus as God, as the creator, as the sustainer of all life, and he sees this poor man, a beggar, for 38 years been sitting by that pool, hoping against hope that something, that he'd be able to get down there and be healed, and Jesus heals him.
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And the Pharisees are upset because Jesus is working on the Sabbath. They don't ask, you claim to be
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God, how is it that you do these things? They don't care about that. They just know that he's a lawbreaker. He's breaking their standards.
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He is a threat, in effect, to their stranglehold on religious power.
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I mean, just imagine being there and seeing that. And then notice the two responses.
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The one who disbelieves and then believes, and the one who disbelieves and then gets angry.
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Number three, true or false, the father gave the lifeless son life, which he has forever.
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The father gave the lifeless son life, which he has forever. That is false.
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Number two is true. God does not rest on the Sabbath. Not in the truest sense of rest.
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I mean, if you want to say, if it said God did rest on the
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Sabbath, well, then you could make the argument that he rested on the seventh day. Okay? But he does not rest on the
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Sabbath in the sense that he sustains creation all the time. And he even, you know, let's go back to a good question.
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We'll go back to John 5 for just a minute. When Jesus says in John 5, 17, right?
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He says, my father is working until now and I am working.
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What is he saying? The father never stopped working in the sense that he stopped creating on the seventh day, but he never stopped working in the sense that he never stopped sustaining all of creation.
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And so Jesus says, just like the father, the son does not rest.
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And I'm going to show you that I'm not resting by doing what? Healing this man on the Sabbath. So, he was definitely
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Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not in charge of the second person of the
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Trinity. Okay. The father did not give the lifeless son life.
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So that's false. What did Jesus mean when he said, for as again in John 5, for as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son also to have life in himself.
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It sounds like maybe the son was lifeless and void and then the father gave him life, right?
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Augustine has the answer. He did not mean that the father gave life to the son already existing without life.
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In other words, like Adam, right? What did God do in Genesis?
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He created Adam's body out of dirt, then breathed the breath of life into him.
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But Augustine says, he did not mean that the father gave life to the son already existing without life, but that he begot him timelessly in such a way that the life which the father gave the son by begetting him is co -eternal with the life of the father who gave it.
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He gives him the divine essence and he gives him eternal life. He's always had it.
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How does that work exactly? Because God. Questions, concerns, comments, heresies.
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Okay. Number four. We always welcome heresies in this class. Number four.
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True or false, there is no text that teaches eternal generation. True or false, there is no text that teaches eternal generation.
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A false, maybe true. Is there anybody bold enough to just stand up and say,
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I'll jump in the baptismal pond. No, don't do that. The answer is, according to Dr.
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Barrett, see that's my weasel word. True. True.
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He says, sometimes critics will object. Eternal generation is the stuff of theologians.
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Something imposed on the text. Name just one verse where eternal generation is taught.
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Then he says, such an objection misses something almost too simple to say.
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Eternal generation is intrinsic to the very names scripture reveals.
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Father and son. Far more persuasive than a proof text are the biblical names by which
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God himself reveals his eternal relations of origin. And then he recaps briefly.
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We have to, yeah, we can close on this one. Let's recap. He says, to be a son is to be generated from a father.
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That's the essence of sonship. It is the fundamental characteristic that distinguishes a son from a father.
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Generation communicates that a son shares the nature of his father. And at the same time that he is distinct from his father.
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Otherwise, a father would not be called a father and a son would not be called a son. The titles would be meaningless.
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Barrett goes on to say, the biblical names give away the person's relations to one another.
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That is by design. The father is only father if he generates the son.
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And the son is only son if he is generated by the father. And the father doesn't become a father.
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And the son doesn't become a son. They always were. In that sense, it is impossible to choose between son and begotten.
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The two define each other. One cannot be understood without the other. As Augustine says, when we say begotten, we mean the same as when we say son.
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Being son is a consequence of being begotten. And being begotten is implied by being a son.
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So, back to the original question here. There is no text that teaches eternal generation.
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There isn't one specific one where the Bible says, in eternity past, the father begat the son.
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Eternally begat him. The son was eternally begotten because it would be...
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Well, first of all, it really wouldn't fit in a text. And secondly, it would demand a whole couple of books to be written about it.
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But, we can discern the persons of eternity by looking at the way the
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Bible describes them is his point. Well, we have to close here because I have some baptisms to do.
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We'll start with number five next time. But I would just say this, that it's important for us to realize that just because the
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Bible doesn't explicitly use a term doesn't mean that it's not
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A, a biblical concept and B, not correct. For example, we say this one all the time,
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Trinity. We would never see that term. There's no single verse that we could point to and just go, well, that's the
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Trinity. And in a nutshell, we could go to the baptisms, the baptism of Jesus, and we could see that.
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And we would get some essence of it. But on the other hand, heretics, Arians, look at that same passage and they conclude that we have three different persons, three different beings and not one
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God. And then also the modalists look at it and they're fine with it too. you know, the word
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Trinity never exists. It's just shorthand. And the same way we could say that eternal generation, that concept is not explained, but I think it is listed and we'll talk about it next week.
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I've mentioned it already. The word monogamous often interpreted, and we'll discuss this more next week, as being like a
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John 3 .16 in the ESV, sadly, says, only begotten
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Son, or no, it doesn't even say begotten, it says only Son. Well, that's true, but it's very limited and not theologically correct.
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So anyway, we'll talk more about that next week. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for these things that we get to ponder and wrestle with, that we might better understand our triune
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God. Lord, press these truths to our heart. Help us to understand them. Let us even wrestle with them during the week.
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Father, that we might understand your word better and see the import of these things as they appear again and again and again in scripture.
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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. By the way, also next week we'll see how the
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Old Testament in surprising places talks about Jesus, including