The American Churchman: Cultivating a Family Identity

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Well, hello, it is Jumpy John and Matthew for the American Churchmen podcast, where we talk about ways to encourage men to fulfill their

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God -given duties with gentleness and courage. How are you doing, Matt? I'm doing good.

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And yes, you are quite jumpy, but that's okay, because whenever I rarely do this, but whenever I decide to look back at one of our episodes, you always look just so smooth, and then randomly my camera gets really blurry for some reason.

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So I guess now you have to experience this, so sorry to see that, John. The funny part is

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I was giving someone advice earlier today on their camera, and they had jumpiness, and it actually was freezing.

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And now I just feel like a big hypocrite. So I don't know what's causing this, but it doesn't seem to be the camera itself.

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It seems like it's the browser, and I'll have to explore that, but right when we needed it to work.

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Anyway, if you're listening in audio, you have no clue what we're talking about, which is just fine.

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We have a big conference coming up. I should let everyone know about this first. We have a couple of conferences, but the big one, let's see,

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I'll pull it up and see if I can... Yeah, there we go. Talk about it while we're doing it.

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So it's called the Christianity and the Founding Conference. It says, actually on TrueScript, it says

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Church and the Founding. So maybe it's because that's shorter. Maybe Christianity was too long. I don't know, but it is actually Christianity and the

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Founding. And that's in Sullins Grove, Pennsylvania from April 25th through 26th.

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If you click on that link at truthscript .com, you can check it out, or you can just go directly there at christianityandthefounding .com,

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and you can register 30 bucks. That's honestly a really good price for what you're going to be getting.

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And then a VIP dinner, $50 if you want to be part of that, that's on Friday night.

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And we've got some great guests, some great speakers. And yeah, it's a

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Friday, Saturday, Sunday thing, Friday night, Saturday, Sunday in April. So check it out, christianityandthefounding .com.

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And of course, as always, if you want to donate to TruthScript, which is underwriting this conference, truthscript .com, scroll to the bottom where it says donate.

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All right. Well, with that, Matthew, let's start off with our attribute of God for today.

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Yes. I kind of always say something like this, but I feel like this one, I really do need to say this because I feel like this one's going to get a little bit deeper, but we're going to be diving into this attribute of God known as divine truth or just truth being an attribute of God.

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Now, it may seem like pretty straightforward. Okay. What is something that's true? Something that coheres with reality.

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But describing this as an attribute of God, actually, there's a lot more built into it, believe it or not.

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So we may be getting into some deep territory today. And so I look forward to that because I'll see if I can actually sufficiently explain it or whether I look like a sood.

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But anyways, two verses we're going to be reading today. Both are from the

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New Testament. We're going to be going over John 14, 6 and Hebrews 6, verse 16 through 18. So I'll start off with John 14, 6.

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Most people know this like easy Bible verse to memorize, demonstrating that Christianity alone is the one true faith and through Christ alone, we can come to salvation.

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Where John 14, 6 says, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life.

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No man cometh unto the father, but by me. Notice that second thing he says, I'm the way, the truth and the life.

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Remember our attribute of it today is divine truth. So Christ claiming to be the truth. Very interesting. Hebrews 6, verse 16 through 18 says, for men verily swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife, wherein

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God willing more abundantly to shoo unto the heirs of promise, the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath.

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That by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge or lay hold upon the hope set before us.

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Notice in that verse there in verse 18, in which it was impossible for God to lie, which means

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God can only speak the truth. So in order for us to understand how it is that God is truth and that truth is an attribute of God, we must first define what truth is.

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I kind of said this in a very simple way to begin with. Truth is just that which coheres with reality.

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If something is in line with reality, it is true. But metaphysically, when we speak of truth, truth is one of the transcendental properties of being.

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When we think of the transcendentals, we think of truth, beauty, and goodness. And so truth is one of those transcendental properties.

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And notice I said it's a property of being. What is being? It simply is to exist.

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It's pure existence itself. So if truth is one of the properties of being, and we think of being, being as such is true in the ontological sense that it is what it is, and it cannot be something else.

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Really quick before I go on, I usually always list my sources before, but our three sources we're going to be pulling from today is

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Richard Moeller, Hermann Bavink, and then Gregory of Nyssa. So we'll be delving into that a little bit, needed to, before I continued on, my apologies for forgetting.

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But anyways, back to being. We basically would say about being that being is true in as much as it cannot be non -being.

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If something is, it must cohere with reality. Thus, now all this comes back to truth as an attribute of God.

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The truth of God is essentially the correspondence and identity of the understanding and will of God with the essence of God, making

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God himself truth in an absolute sense. So God is truth. God as pure being must be true because God cannot be non -being, and why can

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God not be non -being? Because God exists of himself. Remember, that's our attribute of aseity, which we went over a few weeks ago, and aseity is an attribute of God.

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And if God exists in and of himself as pure being, he must be truth itself. All things that are true in reality are true because they cohere with reality or being, and in doing so, they participate in being himself, which is

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God. So that was a mouthful. We're going to read two brief quotes to kind of help us digest this.

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The first would be from Herman Bovink. Bovink, on this topic of God as truth, he says, God is also true and trustworthy.

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He can be counted on. Truth is a matter of veracity and genuineness, of logical consistency and ethical correspondence between a person's being and self -revelation.

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God is true in all senses. He is the only God, and he cannot lie or be in error.

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He is truth in its absolute fullness, the source and ground of all truth, all reality.

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He is the light by which alone we can know truth. Now, when I was speaking about being earlier and the correspondence of being with truth and how in order for something to be true, it has to be participating in being, that's like a very platonic notion.

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So it's very philosophical. So I know that some people aren't the biggest fans of philosophy and Christianity.

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So, you know, maybe bite your tongue a little bit when you listen to this. But this next quote we're going to be going over kind of touches on the nature of being.

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And this is from the church father, Gregory of Nyssa, from his work, The Life of Moses.

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So Gregory of Nyssa writes here, and I'm going to kind of go through this again. It can be a little complicated, but it's really illuminating for our understanding of what truth is and how this relates to being, which obviously relates to God, who is pure being.

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Nyssa writes, It seems to me that at the time the great

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Moses was instructed in the theophany, he came to know that none of those things which are apprehended by sense perception and contemplated by the understanding really subsists, but that the transcendent essence and causes of the universe on which everything depends alone subsists.

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For even if the understanding looks upon any other existing things, reason observes in absolutely none of them the self -sufficiency by which they could exist without participating in true being.

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On the other hand, that which is always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change, whether to better or to worse, for it is far removed from the inferior and it has no superior, standing in need of nothing else, alone desirable, participated in by all but not lessened by their participation.

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This is truly real being. And then listen to this last part. And the apprehension of it is a knowledge of truth.

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So that is essentially how I would go over truth as an attribute of God. It got very philosophical.

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We got into a lot of platonic territory. I hope I made somewhat sense. But that is that's truth as an attribute of God.

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Excellent. Yeah. Thank you, Matthew. Now your camera's going blurry. So forgive us for those streaming right now.

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We are having a little bit of a difficulty with, I guess, something. Internet connection. I don't know what. But that was an excellent description of truth.

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And I don't know if you're equipped to talk to this yet. I don't know if you do study

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Vantill at all and maybe you get him in apologetics at seminary. I may at some point.

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I haven't read a whole lot of Vantill, admittedly. I mean, like when

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I was like in like middle and high school, I was like kind of in like the pop Vantillian train and all that.

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But I mean, that's not actually reading Vantill. So I've not engaged too much with that now. So Theology Matters says this is what

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Vantill grounds his apologetic in. And John Frame agrees that he does the same. Check out

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John Frame's examination of Vantill's thoughts. So I've read I've read Frame on apologetics.

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I'm not sure which source Theology Matters is referencing there. But no,

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I think the, you know, description you gave, a definition of truth is pretty compatible for,

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I would think, all apologetic, well, major apologetic approaches. They would all agree with that for the most part.

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You know, there's I mean, the correspondence theory of truth is is the major one that you hear about.

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Right. But it's not the only one that's out there. I mean, you could have the coherence. Actually, some people have told me that's more into Vantill's.

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His thinking is the coherence theory of truth, where truth is that which coheres to itself and does not have any contradictions within it.

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There's anyway, I don't know if I want to get into a big discussion about that. I can see both of those things actually being the truth can't have contradictions in it.

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But it also corresponds to reality. I think it was

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Michael Butler, who's a Vantillian, I was listening to was saying I've listened to one of his courses a few times where he says that truth is that which coheres to God.

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Right. But but this is an attribute of God, too. This is obviously who God is, is truth.

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Yeah, that's why the truth to life is one of probably the most profound thing that's ever been said in human history.

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Yeah, for sure. And when I said that truth is that which corresponds to reality, in a sense, we can actually say that in a sense, that which is true is reality itself participates in truth, which is why truth is that which corresponds to reality, because fundamentally, reality is just being that it's that which is and because God is pure being and all that is true is that which participates in God.

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So it's really interesting to contemplate and think about the nature of truth and how it corresponds to God, who is truth and how

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God, in order to be pure being, must be truthful because he himself can't be non -being because the satiety is an attribute.

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And that, again, gets in the things I always bring up with our past episodes, that whenever we go through these attributes, like we distinguish them.

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But if all that is in God is God, then all of these attributes, while we distinguish them from each other, they all they all are

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God, in a sense. So it's really interesting to see like how the attributes relate to each other and how they sort of build upon one another in certain senses.

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And it just makes contemplation of God just incredible. And people who say that, like, you know, oh, you have to make sure that, you know, you're actually like being devoted in your prayer life and not just studying theology.

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Like, that's true. Absolutely. You can study theology and be a nerd all you want and not have a real relationship with God. But there is a very practical devotional value to studying theology and especially the attributes of God, because it helps us in contemplating our

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Lord and God. And in so doing, it helps us to adore him. And the adoration of God is essential for a good devotional life with God.

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So and that's just why I'm appreciative of this series, because every time I look into one of these, I'm just like, wow,

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I worship an incredible God. So, yeah, that's why lies would also be such an anti -God thing.

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It's not just that they're that they're denying truth, but they're also, in a sense, denying

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God. They're pretending to live in the reality that he hasn't made.

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And and so in a sense, it's like it's a false reality that you're creating. Yeah. No, a lie is a blasphemy.

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It's a blasphemy in a sense. Yeah, yeah. So, all right. Well, let's let's talk about some of these articles.

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And we have two that we're going to talk about. The primary one is on the importance of family identity.

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So I'll pull that up so people can see it instead of just looking at my jitteriness here.

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You actually cleared up, Matthew. You're looking good now. I don't know what's going on. Very nice. Let's go.

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The importance of family identity. So my mom actually wrote this, which is kind of cool. And so I have some obviously firsthand experience with.

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I saw that last name, Harris. And then I looked at the picture and I'm like, I wonder if that's I wonder if that's John's mom.

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Does it look like me? Yeah, I'll scroll down so people can. There's the. Yeah, no, I'm going to.

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It's small. I don't know. Yeah, you can't really. I zoomed in a little bit. I you know, actually, I can see it.

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She has you guys have a very similar phrenology. Do we? OK, yes.

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Yeah, yeah. Is that how you say it is phrenology? Well, how would you say?

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I don't know. I think I've said phrenology. I probably said it. No, I'm talking about like the pseudoscience of studying skull shapes.

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Oh, it's a real science. Oh, is it? No, I don't know. No, it could be if you really want it to be.

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If you want to be an early 20th century American progressive, then it could be. Yeah. And, you know, avowed scientific racists.

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And, you know, phrenology is your thing, I guess. Funny, fun fact.

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You know, the the main critics of phrenology were Southern clergymen. Oh, really?

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Yeah. Which is kind of against the the narrative that you often hear, right? That they all use. Probably because it corresponded with like evolution.

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So it's like this is Yankee racism. We prefer good old fashioned, you know. Well, it it was more like, yeah, they're bringing in these scientific categories and like guys like, you know,

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Lewis Gizaz. I'm probably watching his name, too. And Samuel, what's his name now?

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Samuel Morton, I think, in Philadelphia. So it was in the north, but they were big on this stuff and trying to say

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Africans weren't really human. Like they really were arguing more, you know, animals or Darwin.

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And I don't know how we got on this, but anyway, we're on it. So guys like it was all because I was noting how you look similar to your mother.

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And then we got on scientific racism that, you know, that's our podcast. Yeah. So anyway.

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All right. So the Southern clergymen like James Henley Thornwell are super critical about this stuff. But we digress into the actual article, which is about having a family identity.

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And no, Matthew and I aren't phrenologists. I don't I shouldn't speak for you, Matthew. I don't think you're a phrenologist.

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I'm not a phrenologist. No, I'm an avowed phrenologist. I'm very dedicated to the study. That's a joke, by the way, really comes through loud and clear.

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All right. Well, the importance of family. So my mom talks about the disintegration of the nuclear families, a little bit of her own experience in that.

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So she actually did. Interestingly enough, this will be, I guess, fascinating for people who want to know more about me and stuff.

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My mom, I'm from California initially. That's where I was born, at least. Right. My parents are from there. So my mom's mom, so my grandma, she was very involved in Hollywood as like not in acting or producing, but in managing the finances, personal finances for actors and actresses.

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She had her own business and she was really close friends with Harriet Nelson from The Ozzie and Harriet Show, which you wouldn't remember at all.

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Neither would I. But I just know it because of family history. It was a really popular show sitcom back in the 50s.

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And so anyway, she she used to, like, I guess, go down to the studio and like, you know, she saw like Mr.

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Ed and some of like the Munsters and the different shows they would do. And because of that, there were some

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Hollywood connections. And so she actually writes a little bit about this, of like what her early life was like and getting briefly into modeling and not wanting to go that direction.

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And, you know, my parents wanted to keep us away from that world or my my parents and grandparents, just because they knew how dark it was, which, you know, with all the revelations coming about child trafficking and all of this, like it's not a surprise to my family.

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This was something that was known and something that they didn't want for me and so forth.

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So grateful for that. But anyway, she talks about having a dysfunctional family and like how all she really wanted was to have a good family, a solid, you know, family unit.

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And and so she gets into some of the problems. There's a lot of suicide and depression, and she thinks a lot of this is probably because of the insecurities that children have who are in broken homes.

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I agree. And that there are these other places of belonging that want their allegiance, including

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Satan clubs, the LGBTQ plus, quote unquote, community, which

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I've always thought that's not a community, but they always call it. Right. Yeah. And and so these are not these are like substitutes, they're substitutes out there, but they're not actually replacements for the family.

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And I would add to this, like, you know, your Friendsgiving can even become like that, like where it's

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I'm not saying you shouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving with your friends, but if your your your peep group becomes the family replacement, then that's not a good thing.

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And then, of course, the solution is cultivating this family identity. She gets into some of the things that she they did with us.

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Like we had our own little unique family festivals and we had these harvest parties every year.

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I thought every kid had it. I think when I was starting out, I realized, oh, it's just us. But we had family rules that were unique to the

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Harris's. And like my parents did all kinds of things. Like they had a family motto at one time, which was obviously this is an inside family joke, but like Harris's stick together like Grandma Harris's tape, because my grandma would like wrap all her boxes in so much tape, you could barely you had to have a knife to just cut through the tape to get into whatever the gift was that she had.

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So but anyway, they tried all these things to cultivate a family identity. And so here's the radical thing about all this,

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I suppose. You could it's not actually that radical. It's actually common sense. But today it might be considered that. I think the family identity for us was in terms of sequence, something that we were we were.

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We died, I don't know how I want to say this. I accepted maybe that's the best word.

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Like we accepted this and we we made it part of ourselves naturally. It wasn't like, you know, we didn't sign on a dotted line anywhere.

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It's just it's just how things went. Right. We're part of this family. And this is sequentially before any of us became

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Christians. And in fact, you know, I my my youngest brother, he has not made a profession of faith in Christ.

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So this is somebody is a Harris, right? And he's included in those things. And I've talked to parents and families who, you know, might be having trouble with their kids.

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And I'm not saying this is a silver bullet, but I do think that if you're especially in one of these like big homeschool families that really prizes the fact that you guys are

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Christians, I think that's great. We were homeschooled. But I think if you make being a Christian part of the family identity or the same thing as the family identity, like there's no difference between the two, then what happens is if you have a child who's not a

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Christian, they're on the outside. They're not part of the family anymore. They don't feel like it. And it does,

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I think, create a pretext for rebellion that probably doesn't need to be there. And I know this is controversial.

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There's going to feel good to disagree with me, but I've seen this firsthand. So my mom doesn't talk about this, but it sparked a thought in my mind that that was one of the things

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I thought they did a good job with, was making sure that our Christianity was something that we had to abide by Christian rules.

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We were part of a Christian family, but they didn't give us the false impression that we were saved because of membership in the family.

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And we were part of the family, whether or not we received Christ. And because this is a natural thing, right?

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Just like in a nation or other natural institutions.

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So thoughts on any of that, Matt? I mean, I don't I mean, I mean, you come from a pretty stable family, right?

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Yes. My immediate family. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, I thought this was a very interesting article, especially with the thought running through my head.

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I bet this is John Harris's mom. So, you know, I feel like I'm learning a bit about you. But no,

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I definitely think that family identity is important because sorry,

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I keep having to clear my throat. So many people like lack a sense of identity and they feel like they want to belong to something bigger.

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And so they immediately like they're going to be like, oh, I'm going to become a nationalist. Oh, I'm going to take pride in my ethnic or racial heritage.

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Oh, I'm going to take pride in the fact that, you know, I belong to Christ, which is a good thing, by the way.

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You know, but like they keep going to all these sayings. And but, you know, you could always just start off like with like, where did you first begin?

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Like you are a you're a person, but you're not just a person if you're a person and you're here.

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It's because you are here by virtue of being in relation to somebody. Your mom, you're a son, which is a title of relation.

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So you're intimately connected with a mom and a dad. And if they had more kids, then you're connected to them because you share that relation.

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So where should we start? But the family. So that's like one of the most like foremost, like fundamental, like beginning pieces of identity on which everything is built.

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And so I think that's really important. A lot of people feel like they lack a sense of identity. It's like, well, start with family.

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And I think that's something that I've always been like growing up. I've always had like a good sense of family identity.

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And over the years, as I do like research and stuff like that's all been like confirmed, like I've started doing like a lot of like tracing my ancestry and stuff and like looking at like my my family members, like, you know, all the way back.

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And my grandma is great to talk to about this because she has like all the records and she tells me these stories about our about our ancestors and my grandparents and my great, great grandparents and all that.

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And it's really cool. But it really is just so important for establishing like a piece of identity and kind of giving you like a start.

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Like there are various identities that you can have. So like I'd argue ethnic identity is important.

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Your identity in crisis, arguably like one of the most important things, your identity and like in so many other aspects and areas like those all matter immensely.

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But a lot of that stuff really does spring from your family identity.

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And there's so much like interconnection, even with Christianity, John, I know you were saying that like you don't think that, you know, maybe

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Christian shouldn't be like part of the essay or essence of being a Harris. And that can that can be true.

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I think I would agree with that to a certain extent. But at the same time, you know, it's like, you know, you can say we're a

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Christian family, regardless of whether. But that doesn't necessarily mean, oh, in order to be a true

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Harris or a true Pearson, you have to be inwardly regenerated. And if you're not, then you're not truly that. No.

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But like, you know, like, you know, religious identity still matters. That's why when we think of Christian nations, that doesn't mean every citizen of this commonwealth is a regenerate

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Christian. That'd be absurd. But like, you know, so much of this stuff with like identity, it really does spring from family and is incredibly important.

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But I feel like I've kind of been talking in a circle at this point, but I don't have anything to add to that. Yeah, those good, good thoughts.

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I think one of the things that has bothered me about the gospel coalition over the years is how often they,

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I think, reinforce this idea that you can find these deep, natural longings in the church.

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And obviously, singleness is the big thing they talk about the most on this and that it's perfectly fine to be single.

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And if the Lord has called you to that, you know, that's praise God, right? That's his domain. But I think the natural course for the majority of people and the template

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God has laid down is for men and women to come together in marriage and have children. And this is the essence of a family is when a man and a woman come together.

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And there is a beautiful thing about that. There's also a beautiful thing when you are able to have children. And I know what it's like to go years and wonder if you're even going to have kids and sort of suffer through that.

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Infertility and all, I get all those things. But I think the solution is not to say, well, you know, it doesn't really matter.

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You can be just as fulfilled in Christ. You can be just as fulfilled serving in his church. I think it's fine to say, you know, for somebody who wants to get married and isn't or wants to have children and they don't have them, it's fine to tell that person, you know, that really stinks.

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I'm so sorry. Yeah, and I'm someone who's been through especially the latter there, like, you know, that must be hard because let's not sugarcoat it.

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These are things, blessings that God has made. And and if and they are fulfilling on a certain you need,

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I think, a measure of of grace from God to be able to handle not having those things.

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And he can give that. But I've seen people try to find the substitute in the church, right?

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And say, well, I have a church family. In fact, someone I'm thinking of right now who said that to me, that my church family is closer than my real family.

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And oh, therefore, I don't really have obligations to my real family anymore because I found this church family.

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And some of these people, this person has not even known past a year or two.

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Like it's it's very little shared experience. And I just kind of shake my head at that and think, well, you're looking for something that you're not going to ever find.

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You might think you're on a honeymoon phase. You think you found something. But that's there is something to be said for the natural family unit that God has created.

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So, you know, don't don't go looking for substance. Like, it's fine if you have like an old man in a church, you call an uncle or a grandpa.

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It's like I add that with a grandma figure. But I wasn't ever fooled into thinking like, you know, this is a complete and total substitute for my actual grandma, right?

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I could develop a lot of closeness and shared experience and and all of that.

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But like it doesn't negate the natural connections that God has created in the real world.

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Yes. Oh, yeah. No, it honestly is like this stuff is so important because I feel like it's just first off, it's almost like you're living in fantasy land if you think a lot of this stuff.

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But there's just there's so much that's very harmful about this. Like the idea that because you lack a natural good or need that the spiritual alternative fulfills that need.

29:49

I mean, that's ridiculous. Now, in the sense that the spiritual alternative can fulfill your ultimate need, which trumps that of a natural need such that you go, it still sucks and not have the natural need.

30:02

But if you have like the ultimate fulfillment through the spiritual counterpart, that is sufficient.

30:07

And you do have everything that you need for this life and the next. And that's good. But to say that like, oh, that's the same thing.

30:15

Oh, I don't need to be married because I belong to the body of Christ and the body of the bride of Christ, and therefore

30:20

I don't need to be married. Okay, you're now taking a stretch. Oh, I don't need a father figure in my life because I have got the father.

30:27

Okay, you're also taking that to a stretch or, oh, I don't need to go to the doctor because Christ is a great physician.

30:36

So you see where we're going here or it's almost. Yeah. Like it's just Jesus jukes and things like that can be scary.

30:43

Now it's like, you know, say, for example, like someone doesn't have an arm. An arm is something that is a good, you know, you can you can grab things with it.

30:52

And if you don't have any arms, that kind of sucks. You can't really do as much. You can start using your legs.

30:57

You can do whatever you want. And that's great. But can you in your mourning and sadness at having a lack of arms find fulfillment in Christ?

31:08

Yeah, absolutely. He's going to help you cope with what you have lost, because even though you don't have this particular good, you know that you have a better good and a better reward awaiting you once we pass into the next life.

31:21

But at the same time, you still don't have arms and you still understand that that sucks. It's in you're not finding fulfillment.

31:27

And, oh, well, I have arms in Christ. No, that's ridiculous. Like you just acknowledge this is something I don't have because God and his providence for some reason did not grant this to me.

31:36

But, you know, I will live. It's fine. But you can still say, yeah, that's not the best. And again,

31:42

I ramble about this because this sort of thing can be so harmful because Jesus jukes are so shallow and they don't actually like they're not profound enough to deal with real problems that people have or they go through real trauma and sadness in life.

31:57

And ultimately it just it leads to spiritual harm. Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things

32:02

I saw is years ago is churches that refuse to celebrate Mother's Day because of this, because they'll say, well, some people want to have kids and want to be mothers, but they're not.

32:13

Or some people lost their mom. And it just brings feelings of sadness to recognize

32:18

Mother's Day, which maybe there's good reasons to not recognize Mother's Day. It is not on a liturgical calendar.

32:24

And I can see some with the regulative principles saying this isn't part of our. But that's a very different reason.

32:29

The reason of like it makes too many people sad is because it reminds them of what's missing is not really good because, yeah, like that's a reality we have to face.

32:41

And scripture also commands to rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. So I think it's a hard thing and maybe some people can't handle that.

32:50

I get that. Maybe that's you want to I don't know, like go to a different church that day where you don't stand out.

32:55

I really don't know. There's different ways to handle that. But I think that the goal should be to get to the point where you're able to even if you're sad on that day, you're able to go rejoice with other people and still celebrate motherhood as this great thing that God has instituted.

33:14

And so, yeah, those are my thoughts. I don't think we should bend to to that kind of pressure and try to make people feel like, oh, it's just totally fine that you don't you're not married or you don't have kids like it like it hurts.

33:30

It's not totally fine. Like when you want those things and you don't have them, it's you don't try to make it.

33:37

I think you do more damage in the long run because you're just denying reality at that point. So, yeah, yeah.

33:43

Just like the good example you brought up. I hadn't thought of it of not having an arm, you know, it's like, oh, it's an arm, isn't that it's wonderful.

33:50

Like, you know, you have less weight on you. So I don't know. It's not.

33:56

Yeah, it's like, well, I kind of really want an arm. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about this other article.

34:04

I'll pull it up and then we'll take questions and cries of outrage and everything else. That's not what

34:09

I wanted to show or I wanted to show true script. Here we go. All right. So there's a short article called

34:17

Doctrinal Basics, The Triune God of Scripture, and I think this article makes two points. The first point is that the

34:25

Trinity is necessary for salvation. So we tend to think of salvation as something that Christ accomplished, but it's also something that the father planned and carried out as well.

34:39

And it's something the spirit applies. And so. If you deny the

34:44

Trinity in some area, it actually is very connected to our salvation, it is primary, and I think there's a pressure now to say other groups like Mormons are.

34:57

But this is one of the problems that they have is they deny the Trinity, one of many problems.

35:04

The point I think that this makes is that the Trinity is basic to who God is and his identity.

35:10

So if you deny the Trinity and that's important, I say it that way. It's not that you have a lack of knowledge about it, specifically deny it.

35:19

You are denying the God of Scripture. And you're at that point, you're not talking about the same.

35:28

So the things that I picked up from this article and we can talk about Trinitarian heresies, but is there anything you wanted to mention about this,

35:37

Matthew? Yeah, no, I absolutely agree that a triune understanding of God is an absolute necessity for salvation, because this would concern, you know, this would concern like the first table of the law.

35:54

You know, I'm Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. So when you're giving worship to God, you have to make sure that you are worshiping the proper object, which is do right worship.

36:09

And if you misidentify the proper object or if you misidentify an object of worship with something else, then you are not directing right worship to that thing and thus you are not worshiping

36:20

God rightly. And so if we do not have a Trinitarian understanding of God and God being

36:26

Trinitarian is essential to his own being, you're not going to be worshiping God.

36:31

And if you're not going to be worshiping God, you're not giving him that which is due and you're in big trouble.

36:37

So I think that's obvious. And I think that part of it is understanding that, you know, revelation is progressive.

36:44

God continues to reveal more and more of himself. And due to the completion of the canon, due to the early churches wrestling through this rigorously, this doctrine of God and like stomping out heresies and things like that, we have such a full picture of who

37:00

God is that there is we're sort of without excuse now. The scriptures are very plain and clear.

37:07

It's a complicated, it's a complicated topic. Absolutely. It can be. But the scriptures are very plain that there is one

37:14

God and there are multiple persons that are, you know, co -equals with one another.

37:20

They are united by essence and will and not three wills, one will. By the way,

37:27

I just want to make that clear because will, you know, will proceeds from nature and there has to be one nature, one essence and things like that.

37:34

But, you know, scripture just is very clear on this. And the church, under the guidance of the

37:40

Holy Spirit, worked very vigorously to figure this out. And by God's grace, we yeah.

37:46

So I think the scriptures are very clear on this topic and it's essential for salvation because in order to be saved, you need to worship

37:54

God. Yeah, I think that EFS, eternal functional subordination, which you just referenced, may be the big threat to the

38:03

Trinity in at least in evangelical circles, because it does, I think it does get you one step away from some kind of a tritheism.

38:11

Obviously, the people who argue for it don't, you know, they deny that they're not going to go there.

38:17

But it's kind of like other theological systems. I think of, you know, and maybe some people are

38:22

Arminian who are listening. But I think of Arminianism as something that like you could be a Christian and hold to these doctrines.

38:28

But if you take them to their conclusions, then you're in a really bad place where man's autonomous and God's not really sovereign over everything and that kind of thing.

38:38

And in this case, I think you're right. Like if you say that there's three different wills and that the relationship of the son and the father that we see in scripture described in the

38:51

Gospels between Christ in that unique sense of him being in an earthly setting and the hypostatic union, if you think that that relationship is somehow eternal and that the son is subordinate to the father in an ontological sense, then yeah, like you are saying that there's at least two different wills here and there's two different wills.

39:18

And I think it does go back to there's there's something in there's two different natures. And that I don't see how you escape it.

39:26

There's going to be you're talking about different entities. And yeah. And so, yeah, it's a problem.

39:32

It really is, I think. And the thing that is, I think, concerning to me is like the reason that people seem to argue that from what

39:42

I can tell, at least, is because they really want to try to support some kind of complementarian arrangements when it comes to men and women's roles in society.

39:52

And so if they can root it in the Trinity and there's a hierarchy in the Trinity between the son and the father, then it doesn't seem as bad as rooting it in creation where it ought to be rooted, because if it's in creation, then this arrangement maybe goes beyond just the.

40:11

House and even the church, it might apply to other things as well that also are part of nature and people don't want to go there, so that's just the way

40:21

I see it. But, you know, I don't know if there are other other Trinitarian heresies you see on the horizon that are threatening the church.

40:33

Not now, I don't have any like receipts for them, so I don't want to speak about it right now because I don't want to accidentally slander anybody.

40:41

But there is a particular someone who is speaking at an upcoming conference pretty soon, not

40:48

Calvin Robinson, by the way. I know who you're talking about, yes. Yes, who almost seem to and again,

40:53

I don't want to say the exact thing because I don't want to accidentally misrepresent or slander him. But based off the language he was using, it got really close not only to making positing separate wills within the

41:06

Godhead itself, but almost in describing the hypostatic union, describing Christ as almost two persons.

41:13

So I'd have to pull up the receipts for that. Again, I don't want to slander him or misrepresent him, but I think that's pretty dangerous territory when the way in which you approach these topics of theology is through a very like Biblicist lens and where everything is just covenantal and legal and yada, yada, yada.

41:31

It's like, yes, covenant is a very big theme in the in the Bible and scripture. Yes, God covenants with man.

41:37

God establishes a covenant with the earth when, you know, after he floods it. Yes. Believe me, I'm big on covenants.

41:43

I'm reformed. Like I get it. But like this is like the problem with like, you know, I don't want to sound like too much of a crypto papist here.

41:50

I'm by far I'm by no means a papist. But when you reject like that, like your inheritance in regard to like the great tradition, like when you don't look at like the

42:02

Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian definition, the Athanasian Creed and all these things with like the authority that they deserve, like this sort of thing happens.

42:12

And it's pretty sad when we are looking at scripture, it's always important to have these things in our mind, not necessarily because they are formally and materially infallible like scripture is, but they do bear a degree of authority in the life of a

42:29

Christian and that these are things that are, you know, they've guided the church for centuries.

42:36

The reformers receive them joyfully. They're rooted and grounded within the scriptures. It's just it's so important realizing that a lot of these statements are just expressions of the apostolic deposit, which is rooted and grounded in the scriptures.

42:51

But yeah, I think that I don't know if that's a big threat, but I mean, it had a few likes on Twitter, so that was a little concerning.

42:59

Yeah, yeah, no, I know exactly what you're talking about. And, you know, knock loose, says I'll go to this one first.

43:04

How can God be three different persons but only have one will? How can the three persons be distinct if they don't have a will?

43:13

Jesus prays to the father that not Jesus will, but the fathers will be done again.

43:18

And that's appealing to the arrangement in the hypostatic union that, you know,

43:26

Christ in his during his earthly ministry prayed these kinds of things.

43:31

And EFS takes that and says, well, that that kind of snapshot right there describes the fullness of the

43:38

Trinity in an ontological sense. So this is where theologians, I suppose, would say that this does not describe the ontological second person of the

43:49

Trinity as having a separate will from the father. This describes Jesus's relationship in his earthly ministry.

43:57

Do you have anything to add to that? Yes. Yeah. So the way in which we conceptualize this is he said, like, can you pull the question back up?

44:06

How can three? Yeah. How can three persons only have one will? The reason why three persons can have one will is because will does not proceed from personhood will proceeds from a nature.

44:18

I having an individuated human nature as a person from my nature precedes my will.

44:24

The three persons of the Trinity all share one nature because they share one essence being the one

44:30

God and thus from their nature precedes the one will. The reason why Christ could pray not his will, but the father's will be done is because the person of Christ after the incarnation assumed he unite.

44:43

What is the hypostatic union? What is being united here? God and man, a human nature and a divine nature in the person of Christ.

44:52

So the one person of Christ has a human will and a divine will. This human will is only like Christ's will, but his divine will is the same will as out of the father and the spirit, because they each share the same nature.

45:07

So because Christ took on himself a human nature, his divine nature being from the father or just his divine nature being from the father and his human nature being from his mother,

45:19

Mary, that is how there can be. You know, we can say that Christ had two wills in the sense that he had a divine will and a human will, and this divine will is the same will that the father and the spirit have.

45:32

It's not another will, which is in agreement with the father and the spirit. It's the same will as the father and the spirit, because these three persons share the same essence.

45:42

I hope that's enough explained much better than my explanation there.

45:47

I think that was good. All right, well, we'll do this and then we'll go to some others. Doesn't that mean God has two wills, then the

45:54

Trinity minus the human nature of Jesus, plus the will of his human nature? We would distinguish and say that the person of Christ has two wills because he has a human will and a divine will, but the person of the father and the spirit, they have one will, which is shared with Christ, but the person of the son has a human and a divine will by virtue of the incarnation.

46:19

The human and the divine will are perfectly united to one another and that they are in agreement with one another.

46:26

But we still distinguish them because Christ has a human nature. He must have a human will, which is in agreement with his divine will, which is shared with the other persons of the

46:36

Trinity. Yeah, it does get kind of heady, but I think that the people who often use these passages to try to argue that we should tamper with the

46:45

Trinity basically should instead be looking into the hypostatic union. And that is the explanation for this.

46:52

And neither the Trinity nor the hypostatic union are things that we can totally conceive of in our finiteness.

47:01

They're not logical contradictions at all, but they are beyond us in, you know,

47:07

I can't grasp necessarily how this all would look because I don't, there's no being that's not

47:14

God that has these attributes. That's what part of what makes him God, right? So trying to describe other examples or other beings that are like this in order to compare them is impossible.

47:26

This is something that is unique to God. And so I understand how hard this is, but hopefully people can see that the implications are not good if you start going down this path that Christ is somehow subordinate to the

47:44

Father's will in a logical sense. All right. Well, let's see. There's some other comments here and we'll get to those and then we'll end the podcast.

47:53

And, you know, if you have questions, let me know now. Love Tuesday evenings. Thanks, Dr. Bob.

47:59

Appreciate that. I am proud of my right handedness. Have you ever seen the left handed right?

48:05

Probably against first or second commandments. Yeah, I've heard, you know, in the medieval times, right? If you had left handedness, you were like of the double, right?

48:11

I've heard that at least. I mean, I don't know. I can't get into it, but Chris says that he likes me.

48:19

Well, thanks, Chris. But I'm drifting left and being politically correct and not wanting to be called far.

48:25

I actually don't know if this has anything to do with what we've discussed. This must be from something else. I don't know. But I appreciate that you like me,

48:32

Chris. I don't really know what to say to that because I don't know what example he's using. But I've only heard that a few times.

48:40

And every time I've heard it, it's more it's usually someone who's, in my opinion, is kind of ideological.

48:46

And, you know, it's usually on something like race or something. They think that I'm not a biological determinist or whatever.

48:52

And I don't know episodes not about that. But I kind of think that if you think of right wing in the

49:00

American sense as being conservative, that I follow a much older conservative tradition than a lot of these more modernist innovations.

49:08

Why I'm not a phrenologist there. I related it back. Thankful for my

49:13

Christian friends of multiple ages, they are closer than my blood family because of the big theological differences. This is worth maybe talking about because,

49:21

I mean, that does exist, right? You can have a family that's just wretched and dysfunctional and all the rest.

49:27

And then your church family does become. Perhaps closer over time, you do more things with them, you'd rather be with them, there's less friction.

49:37

I think what I'm trying to get at is that that doesn't replace your natural family. It can it can maybe like in a temporary way substitute for some of those things like in those people can be very close to you.

49:50

I'm not saying they're not. I'm not trying to take anything away from that. I'm just saying that. The your natural family is just because it's broken doesn't mean that like it's ideal to make the church or another institution or other group a substitute for them.

50:13

There are obligations that come with having a natural family that don't come with having friends. Friends is much more of a choice that you make.

50:23

It's it's a you know, it could be at work where maybe you are pressed together by circumstance. But there's something much deeper,

50:31

I think, that come with the natural obligations that exist within a family unit. And we see that in scripture.

50:37

I mean, there are certain commands given to husbands and wives, children and parents that are unique to them.

50:44

So, yeah, I don't know if you have anything to add to that, but I want to recognize that there are situations like this.

50:52

I have nothing to add. All right. What about this? You don't have anything to add to this either. Having kids changes your perspective on the importance of God's promises to your children that he doesn't see your children as little pagans until they make a profession of faith.

51:05

Oh, I would beg to differ, baby. I mean, they are I don't know at what age they make a profession of faith.

51:10

But, you know, I do kind of revolt. I'll say this about like my little daughter is like seven months now.

51:17

And I do have a revolting, not like super revolting, but I have a spirit of just a distaste for people that say, like, that's that's a little devil you got there, you know, this little sinner there.

51:30

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, there's a sin nature. But, yeah, my daughter is exceptionally good, though.

51:36

So that's probably it's not fair that I'm using her as my example. But like, I just can't really see her that way.

51:44

I understand the sin natures there. It's not a lack of understanding. It's just that like that's not the first thing that jumps to my mind when

51:52

I look at her. And obviously, I pray every night that she would come to know Christ in a personal way and that he would have his hand on her.

51:59

But, yeah, I mean, there without Christ, children who, you know, whether age of accountability or not, children do need the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

52:12

There's no doubt about that. So I do want to make that very clear here. Let's see, we got some other.

52:22

Someone's trying to post a link. I can't really do anything. Viper in a diaper. That's right. I've heard that Viper in a diaper.

52:31

Let's see, John did on Jesus and rebukes he gave to the Pharisees was fire. Oh, thanks.

52:36

Okay. Yeah, I just did a podcast on the rhetoric of Jesus, which I couldn't find much information on online.

52:43

So I had to kind of create it myself. And anyway, just like seven rules to think about or principles that Jesus used in dealing with the

52:51

Pharisees. So if you want to check that out, Conversations That Matter podcast, I just released it today. All right, we're not going to go into the

52:59

EFS stuff anymore. I'm sorry. We just don't have the bandwidth or the time. Dr.

53:04

Bob is teaching on the Apostles Creed, the Sunday school this Sunday. So cool.

53:10

Yeah, very epic. Yeah, I think the, so I'm trying to remember now, obviously, like I've, this all went through my mind in seminary, but the

53:18

Athanasian Creed and the Apostles Creed are different, right? Yes. And the

53:23

Athanasian Creed goes into more detail on the Trinity. The, yes, it does.

53:29

And a little bit on the hypostatic union as well. Yeah, okay. It's also not written by Athanasius and is also rejected by the

53:38

Eastern Church because it explicitly teaches the filioque. What's the filioque?

53:43

That the spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. That's a weird, that's one of those things

53:50

I haven't looked into deeply, but I know the Eastern Church takes pride in that. Like they had the original view.

53:57

I, it's so outside my wheelhouse, but. Yeah, it's really funny when you read

54:02

Protestants on it, like scholastic Protestants, like Francis Turretin, because they'll basically be like, okay, the

54:08

East is right in that Rome had no right to add this in the Creed, but Rome is right in that it's theologically more correct.

54:15

It's really funny to read them. Yeah. I, it's such, so in my mind, it's probably major.

54:24

I haven't really thought about it much, but it seems like a minor thing on the surface at least. So just hasn't been the most interesting thing, but for me to look into.

54:33

But all right, well, I think that's about it. Just know that the filioque is correct and you're good, John. All right.

54:38

Yeah, I'm, I got Matthew here to vouch for me. So that's all right. Well, I hope that everyone's doing well out there.

54:46

We'll have another episode coming next week. And actually, I got to talk to Matthew about this, because we have a special guest that Matthew doesn't know is going to be on the podcast.

54:55

President Donald Trump is going to. Oh, I wish. No, he's a little busy.

55:00

So he's, he's getting inaugurated. I'm going. I'll say, I don't know if you knew this. I'm actually going to go.

55:07

Oh, very nice. I wanted to, I wanted to go, but just things are tight right now. So I'm, I'm hunkering down and just yeah.

55:15

So Trump keeps texting me though. I'm like, dude, like, I know you want to. Yeah. He wants you there.

55:21

He wants me there. So I should probably just do it. But no, in all seriousness, I have two brothers -in -law and I guess a boyfriend -in -law and they all want to go.

55:30

And boyfriend -in -law. What do you call it? When your, your, your sister -in -law's dating?

55:36

My sister -in -law's boyfriend. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Sounded a little light in the loafers there.

55:46

Yeah, a little bit. So yeah, I, I'm going to go down with them. And I, so my one friend who's in counter intelligence was like, yeah,

55:56

I'm not going to go. I think there could be some violence. I'm like, please Lord, please.

56:02

I do not want to be stuck in Metro DC during the second civil war.

56:08

So. You could have just stopped and said, I don't want to be stuck in Metro DC and you would have been. It would have been the same thing, right?

56:14

Yeah. So yeah, everyone can pray for me. It's going to be nuts because it's a one day thing and I'm like five hours at least away.

56:22

So it's like, and we got to go in, but so it's, I got to be there. I got to start like at least six hours beforehand.

56:28

So I'm probably going to start driving at like one or two in the morning. And then I'll get, I know. And then I'll get home at like,

56:34

I'm not going to get any sleep. And John use a

56:40

Zoomer language. You're cooked. Yeah. I am cooked and, but I love my president, you know, so I need to stick up for him and I need to be there on this magnificent day.

56:53

That's right. All right. All right. God bless everyone. Don't get tired of winning. See you next week. Take care y 'all.