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All right, so how familiar are you with the Second Mormon Baptist Confession?
I've read through it once but not really studied it or taken notes.
Okay, so contrary to its title, it was written in 1677 and then later made more widely available and published in 1689. So it goes through a bunch of different topics, what a confession is compared to, say, a creed.
So in the early church you have these various creeds like the Nicene Creed that establish what is necessary for every Christian to believe. Confession goes through much broader categories beyond just what's necessary to believe.
It's a lot more helpful than what a lot of churches have today. A lot of churches have a pinpoint statement of faith or something on their website. That's really as much as they've codified anything a lot of times.
And on one hand, I suppose there's some convenience in that, in that it's very broad and no one feels excluded. But if you have a lot of your doctrine well-defined, it actually gives you a lot of freedom to teach within that, knowing that you are not going beyond what the expectations are.
The expectations are set pretty clearly when you have a confession. All right, so the various chapters are... see, there's 32 different chapters. They're each broken up in paragraphs. I'll go ahead and start with reading the first paragraph.
The Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. The light of nature and the works of creation and providence so clearly demonstrate the goodness, wisdom, and power of God that people are left without excuse.
However, these demonstrations are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and His will that is necessary for salvation. Therefore, the Lord was pleased at different times and in various ways to reveal Himself and to declare His will to His church, to preserve and propagate the truth better, and to establish and comfort the church with greater certainty against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan in the world.
The Lord put this revelation completely in writing. Therefore, the Holy Scriptures are absolutely necessary because God's former ways of revealing His will to His people have now ceased. All right, so the Bible is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.
You could put that into a three-by-three matrix. The Scriptures are the only sufficient rule of saving knowledge. They're the only sufficient rule of saving faith, sufficient rule of obedience, and same thing with certainty and infallibility.
So it's sufficient in that you don't need anything else. It's not that we need an extra book to be added to that in order to have sufficiently what God would have us to know in order to be able to worship Him properly, in order to be able to obey Him sufficiently, etc.
For example, one way you can think of how the term sufficient might get used is the Seventh-day Adventists teach that Ellen G. White's writings are authoritative. So they say they're as accurate as Scripture and as authoritative as Scripture, but they don't call them Scripture.
And the reason why they say they're not Scripture is because they'd say, well, Scripture is sufficient. So when we add Ellen G. White, you don't actually need her. You don't actually need her writings because the Bible is sufficient.
But in addition to being the only sufficient rule of saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, it's also the only certain one. So when they add her and they say that her writings are certain, that's when they're violating the statement.
Now, all this is needed because creation is insufficient. So creation reveals God in substantial measures. According to Psalm 19 .1, heavens declare the glory of God. According to Romans 1, he's made himself known in all creation, his wisdom and power.
But none of those things tell us about the way of salvation. They don't tell us about Jesus. They don't tell us about forgiveness. They tell us about God's justice and maybe his general character of mercy, but they don't talk about his actual plan of salvation, which is what he has given us in Scripture.
So in this second sentence here, it says, the Lord is pleased at different times in various ways to reveal himself and to declare his will to his church. That's alluding, of course, to Hebrews 1 .1 -2.
He revealed himself in many different ways in the Old Testament, but in these last days, he has made himself known in particularly Christ as he has taught his apostles and sent them out and that revelation recorded in Scripture.
And this is for the protection of the church. Therefore, and it says, God's former ways of revealing his will to his people have now ceased. That is probably for most people, for most, the average evangelical coming into this class, they usually are tracking with all the previous stuff.
And then this part is the first part where they're not too sure about because a lot of people believe that his former ways of revealing his will to his people have continued, right? I don't know. How much background do you have in that?
I know that you've gone to churches before that have more continuationist leanings, but how much like the actual practice of speaking in tongues and stuff like that?
Yeah, I've gone to churches with continuationist leanings, but during a regular service, these things are not practiced. It's only really a couple times a year at retreats and things like that. And so, I've sort of been around it, but never been convinced of it.
Okay. And what's your main objection? Is it just kind of like a neutral stance? Like this is, I don't really have one thought one way or the other. It's just,.
I'm just pretty skeptical. I used to just be more of a neutral, but the more I've thought about it, I don't find that any of these ways that God is apparently revealing himself, I don't find those.
To be necessary. Right, yeah. I guess the comeback people would typically have to that statement as, well, he gave a lot of things that weren't necessary, but he was gracious in revealing himself in additional ways.
It wasn't necessary that he answered Gideon several times to be tested, that kind of thing. But yeah, considering what the Bible says about this topic, I think one of the most convincing arguments I've ever heard is called the waterfall argument.
Sam Waldron has a book called To Be Continued? And it is a very short book. I recommend it to anybody who's trying to figure out this topic, but it goes through several points. So, the first is, it just starts off with apostles.
So, in Ephesians 4, it describes Christ having given gifts to the and those gifts are the various people. So, apostles, and prophets, and shepherds, and teachers, etc. Now, apostleship has ceased. I suppose there are a few people who think that apostles continue, but most people acknowledge that.
Just to demonstrate that apostleship doesn't continue. Apostleship is something that requires people to actually have seen Jesus. 2 Peter 1 .16 says, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
And then on top of that, not just seeing him, but actually having been taught by him. These disciples had been taught by him for three years. Now, and I know I repeated a lot of the stuff in the ceremony yesterday, but just to go through it again real quickly here.
And that's even the case with Paul in Galatians 1. You see that right after God had appeared to him, right after Christ had appeared to him and given him his commission, Paul went away into Arabia for three years, according to Galatians 1 .17 and 18.
What was he doing for three years? The exact same period of time the other disciples were taught by Christ, it seems very apparent, especially in the context of Galatians 1 .2, that he was being instructed by Christ.
And then beyond that, Paul says that he was the last of all the apostles. As one untimely born Christ appeared to him last of all, it says in 1 Corinthians 15 .8. So there can't be another apostle. All right.
So once you have that, well, there's at least one gift that's ceased. And the question is, well, are there any other gifts that cease? Ephesians 2 .20 says that the Church is built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles.
Well, if the point of prophecy is to reinforce apostolic revelation, and there's no longer apostolic revelation, there's no place for prophecy. And then tongues is essentially prophecy in a different language.
Tongues is just a subspecies of prophecy. So then there's no tongues. And then if revelation and generally verbal revelation has ceased, what is the point of all these different things? Hebrews 2 .4 describes the purpose.
It says, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. So the Word is confirmed by the Holy Spirit bearing witness by signs and wonders.
This is the purpose of signs. The whole purpose of a sign is to signify some revelation. That is even what the word sign means. So you're right that it's not necessary. They don't serve the same purpose.
Now, people will once again point out, well, I don't see anywhere in the New Testament that says signs will cease. And you can make little arguments around 1 Corinthians 13 where it sounds like it might be saying something like that.
But you don't see that in the Old Testament either. Well, there is the one statement in the Minor Prophets that talks about essentially the cessation of prophecy. I forget exactly how it's phrased. But that's what you see in between the two Testaments is that for 400 years, there's no prophecy.
I don't want to say there's no miracles because miracles still happen. But there's no sign miracles. There's no sign gifts being used to verify revelation because the revelation in the Old Testament has ceased.
This is something that we've seen before, and it's not surprising that we see it again. In Amos 8, 11 through 12, it says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. They shall run to and fro, seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. Occasionally, this is interpreted as referring to the time in between the two Testaments.
There's 400 years where the Lord is not speaking until John the Baptist arrives on the scene. And likewise, when John the Baptist arrives, when Jesus starts performing all his miracles, the reason why it is so astounding is because there haven't been prophets, there haven't been this kind of miracle working.
It's not just that Jesus is doing more miracles than the prophets before. It's also the fact that you just don't have prophets being attended by miracles because the whole purpose of the miracles is to demonstrate the truth of the prophecy.
So yes, these former ways of revealing his will to his people have now ceased. Moving on to paragraph two here. The Holy Scriptures, or the Word of God written, consist of all the books of the Old and New Testaments.
These are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings. Maybe I won't read it all. I never do, but hopefully you're familiar with a few of these, if not all of them.
And there are 39 books in the Old Testament, there are 27 books in the New Testament. It is good to memorize them. At the end here, it says, okay, let me just start this whole thing over. The Holy Scriptures, or the Word of God written, consist of all the books of the Old and New Testaments.
These are, and then it goes and it lists the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. All of these are given by the inspiration of God to be the standard of faith in life. So what it means by the standard of faith in life is that rule that determines what we should believe and what we should do.
This is, like it said in the previous part, the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. It's worth memorizing the books in order. It makes it a lot easier to look up books in the Bible.
There are songs that you can find online. The one that I really like for the Old Testament is a video on YouTube where someone made a submission for VeggieTales. So it's not an official VeggieTales video, but it's in the style of VeggieTales.
It's very memorable. And the New Testament, I haven't been able to find this online, but what I learned as a kid was to the tune of 10 Little Indians. I think that's the tune. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, Acts, and there's Romans, and it continues on.
But yeah, it's worth memorizing those things. Any questions? All right. 1 .3. The books commonly called the Apocrypha were not given by divine inspiration and so are not part of the canon or standard of the Scriptures.
Therefore, they have no authority for the Church of God and are not to be recognized or used in any way different from other human writings. Are you familiar with the Apocrypha? Yeah. Yeah, so it's these books basically at the end of the Old Testament.
They aren't Scripture. They weren't recognized as any kind of Scripture really until after the Reformation. It's very interesting. A lot of people think that, oh, these are books that were always recognized as Scripture, and then Protestants suddenly rejected them.
It's kind of the other way around where nobody recognized them as Scripture, and then after the Reformation, there was a doubling down and grasping on these things as sort of like Scripture, but they're not really still in Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy considered Scripture in the same way.
They're usually called durocanonical. So there's a recognition that they're not of the same quality as the rest of Scripture. I don't know exactly what durocanonical entails, but it entails something along the lines of not as important at least.
Have you read any of it? I haven't. Okay. There are some books that are really useful. 1 and 2 Maccabees, really useful history. A lot of the stuff that Daniel prophesied in Daniel 11, we know of its fulfillment.
That is primarily recorded in 1 and 2 Maccabees, so it's a really useful history book. A lot of the other apocryphal books aren't as valuable apart from some kind of historical study of people who cite them or reference them or anything.
So yes, they might be used for certain purposes, but they are no more valuable than any other human writing. All right. 1 and 4, the authority of the holy scriptures obligates belief in them. This authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church, but on God, the author alone, who is truth itself.
Therefore, the scriptures are to be received because they are the word of God. If you've ever dealt with Roman Catholics, you'll notice that a lot of times they will say that you Protestants believe the Bible, but it's the church that gave you the Bible.
And the idea there is that the church is the foundation of authority on which the Bible rests. What this is doing is contending with that and saying, no, actually, it doesn't matter whether or not man has testified to its truth.
It is authoritative regardless of who confirms it. Indeed, God has used the church to make it more evident to any newcomer who comes along and asks, what is the word of God? Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice.
I know them and they follow me. So his sheep have heard his voice. They have consistently identified these 66 books as being the word of God, but that is not what actually made them the word of God. They were the word of God before that process of identification.
Let me check my, okay. All right. One five, the testimony of the church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the holy scriptures. Moreover, the heavenliness of the contents, excuse me.
Yeah. Losing my voice. The testimony of the church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the holy scriptures. Moreover, the heaviness of the contents, the power of the system of truth, the majesty of the style, the harmony of all the parts, the central focus on giving all glory to God, the full revelation of the only way of salvation and many other incomparable qualities and complete perfections all provide abundant evidence that the scriptures are the word of God.
Even so, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the scriptures comes from the internal work of the bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. All right.
So, this passage in the confession talks about the fact that there are many different evidences that demonstrate that scripture is true. All kinds of things, including the aesthetics of it, that it's beautiful, that it addresses things that are very high in nature, that it is consistent and does not contradict itself, all those things, evidence that is true.
But ultimately, no one is persuaded by those evidences. Ultimately, it is only by the work of the spirit that they are persuaded that the Bible is true. This is different from what you see in Islam. In Islam, they will argue that the Quran is the most beautiful book in the world.
If you could read it in Arabic, you would be convinced that it were true, just by human rationality, etc. While we would say the Bible is the greatest book, many people have read it and not believed. It is necessary for the Holy Spirit to do that work.
I know another thing that some people conclude after reading this, which I find fairly wild. Some people read this and see it as proof for either classical apologetics or evidentialism. Evidentialism is the idea that you would argue for the truth of Christianity primarily on the basis of empirical observations, that you can just, in a cumulative case, demonstrate enough things and that will overwhelm someone's rational objections and then they believe.
The fact is, according to Romans 1, that people suppress the truth in unrighteousness, and so it's not really a head problem, it's a heart problem. Classical apologetics is a little more sophisticated than that, but I've heard people say the same thing, where basically there is a way, more or less by reason, to demonstrate that the Bible is sufficient.
Once again, I would agree with that. You can demonstrate it, but whether or not that other person will believe is a completely different story. So ultimately, there just has to be a call to repentance and trusting in the Spirit to do that work.
I think the message of this section is pretty clear when it says that the Holy Spirit is necessary. Yeah, you should ask lots of questions if you have any. This stuff might be straightforward, but the more questions, the more discussion.
That's why Keith has a lot of questions. That's why I was hoping to have him here because I know he'd ask about all kinds of stuff.
Well, okay. So, when we're presenting the gospel to people, it's still good to present a lot of evidence for the truth of Scripture, right? Even though that is not going to convince anyone, it's still good to present that?
Oh, yeah. It's still good to present it up to the point where.
You're not validating their concerns in a way that undermines God's authority. So if they're setting themselves up as the judge of God and you, by consistently just giving them more and more evidence and not calling them to repentance, you can do that in a way that validates their opposition to God.
So that's the thing that I would be concerned about. But otherwise, no, it is reasonable. And even as believers, we want to see the truth be tested, etc. So all that's valid as long as it doesn't involve placing man over God.
All right, 1 -6. The whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for his own glory and man's salvation, faith, and life is either explicitly stated or by necessary inference contained in the Holy Scriptures.
Nothing is ever to be added to the Scriptures either by new revelation of the Spirit or by human traditions. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the inward illumination of the Spirit of God is necessary for a saving understanding of what is revealed in the Word.
We recognize that some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church are common to human actions and organizations and are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom following the general rules of the Word, which must always be observed.
All right, so everything that you need to know or do is contained in Scripture directly in explicit words or by necessary inference. It is contained therein. The phrase that many people are familiar with that's in the Westminster Confession that this is ultimately based on is good and necessary consequence.
So there are some implications of that term, but in general, it can just be said that everything you need to believe or do is contained in Scripture, even if it's not explicitly written there, it is by way of implication.
That's why Jesus can say things to various people and say, have you not read? And then draw out implications of things. Or to the Sadducees, he points out that God says, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Therefore, there's a resurrection. So he's saying that necessarily contained in those truths is the resurrection. So yeah, we should follow Scripture all the way to its logical conclusions. A lot of people are very afraid of doing that, and they think that it's safer.
If you imagine a road with two ditches, the safer ditch is the one where you don't go beyond Scripture. The reality is you look at Jesus' rebuke of these various people who weren't willing to follow Scripture to its logical conclusions.
The Pharisees, for example, who are trying to figure out the rules of divorce by looking at the explicit statements of Moses, and Jesus is telling them it's all right there in the fact that the two shall become one flesh, and you are supposed to derive all the necessary implications from that.
It seems evident there's no safer ditch, that going too far is a bad ditch, and stopping short is a bad ditch also. So yeah, we should be taking Scripture seriously and following it to its logical conclusions.
Now, this paragraph in the confession finishes with a statement that even though that's true, there are things about worship where God has not specified every last detail. And this is going to be important later when you see in the confession that we are only allowed to worship God in ways that he has commanded, but there are some things that are common to human actions or organizations that would be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom.
So in other words, there are various things that we're going to decide to do in worship that aren't stated by the Word of God expressly, like for example, meeting at 10 o 'clock instead of 9 o 'clock, standing instead of sitting for different portions, things like that.
This is acknowledging that some of those things are left up to wisdom. The traditional language around that is forms and elements. The elements of worship can't be changed, but the forms of them have some flexibility as guided by scripturally-informed wisdom.
Any questions on any of that?
Yeah, what are the elements of worship that you're talking about?
Yeah, so it goes over it later in the confession, but it is the reading of the Word of God, rare baptism, the Lord's Supper, and occasional times of fasting or thanksgiving in a religious sense. I might have gotten them all, but I don't think I did.
Oh, singing with melody in your heart. Although interestingly, at the time that this confession was written, it wasn't completely agreed upon among Baptists whether or not that singing was supposed to be vocal.
Yeah.
And so, those are the elements. What are the forms of those that can differ?
Yeah, so the form could refer to any aspect of it that differs, right? So, like, what key you sing the song in, what your posture is during these different sections. And that's not to say that it's all up for grabs and everything's fair game at that point.
Obviously, one of the things that they decide during the Reformation is they would not kneel during the Lord's Supper because that seemed to indicate worshiping the Eucharist like Roman Catholics do because they believe it's actually Jesus' body and blood in a physical sense, right?
So, not every form is up for grabs. It still needs to be directed by wisdom, but it just could be any aspect. All right, 1 -7. Some things in Scripture are clearer than others, and some people understand the teachings more clearly than others.
However, the things that must be known, believed, and obeyed for salvation are so clearly set forth and explained in one part of Scripture or another that both the educated and uneducated may achieve a sufficient understanding of them by properly using ordinary measures.
So, Scripture is knowable by everyone. It's not just for those who are educated. Once again, especially in this section, and a lot of sections of the Confession, it will be giving arguments against Roman Catholicism.
This is an argument against Roman Catholicism. Today, Roman Catholics are all welcome to read the Bible. That wasn't always the case. In fact, that really wasn't the case until the mid -1900s. The Bible was only for the educated, and that's why it was kept in Latin.
But this is saying that even though, one, not everybody understands it perfectly, and two, there are plenty of passages that are very difficult to understand, etc. That doesn't mean that everything that is needed to be known can't be understood by even the uneducated as.
They're given the Word of God. So, here, the educated and the uneducated, it's not talking about all people, but only the people who have the internal work of the Holy Spirit. Is that correct?
BFG. That's a good question. I would certainly agree with that statement. If we're going to say that what it's talking about is the kind of saving faith that's needed, I'm not sure I see a statement that's directly about saving faith here.
It may just be talking about the intellectual facts that need to be known, believed, and obeyed, and leaving faith as a distinct thing. But yeah, I would say that if we're setting aside saving faith, then it's still the case that even the uneducated would be able to know the things that they must believe in order that on that final day, not only are they without excuse on account of nature, but in addition, without excuse because they've rejected the message of Scripture if they've been exposed to it.
1 .8. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the native language of the ancient people of God. The New Testament was written in Greek, which at the time it was written was most widely known to the nations.
These Testaments were inspired directly by God, and by His unique care and providence were kept pure down through the ages. They are therefore true and authoritative, so that in all religious controversies the Church must make their ultimate appeal to them.
All God's people have a right to and a claim on the Scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them. Not all of God's people know these original languages, so the Scriptures are to be translated into the common language of every nation to which they come.
In this way the Word of God may dwell richly in all, so that they may worship Him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and the comfort of the Scriptures may have hope. So this is very similar to the previous paragraph.
The point is that the Word of God should be made accessible to all, and that includes in translation, not just leaving it in Latin so only the educated can read it, but taking it from Hebrew and Greek and putting it in the common language.
In the original Confession, it says the vulgar language of the people. That usually confuses people, but vulgar just means common, and it's very ironic because the Latin version of the Bible is called the Latin Fallgate because it's supposed to be for the common man, but then over time it had become just for the educated and not the common man.
So this is acknowledging on one hand that only the Greek and Hebrew are immediately inspired, only those are the Word of God in that fullest sense of being infallible. However, our Scriptures as they have been translated, we may still call this the infallible Word because in as much as it agrees with the Hebrew and Greek, it is God's Word.
This is something that perplexed me for a long time when I first started thinking more deeply about these things. Can we call the English Bible inspired? Have I never read the inspired Word of God? Things like that.
No, it is the inspired Word of God. It just needs to be qualified by this notion of not being immediately inspired. You could use the term immediately inspired, although as I've looked through historical writings, I haven't found anyone who actually speaks that way, but that seems to be the only other alternative to being immediately inspired.
In the last portion it says, in this way, the Word of God may dwell richly in all. I find that interesting. It is alluding to Colossians 3 .16 about the Word of Christ dwelling in you richly. Let me go ahead and actually load it.
Colossians 3 .16 says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Were you at the conference that we did last year?
This is a verse I talked about a few times because there's a lot of implications really packed into there, especially as you see that in the confession it talks about this verse motivating the translation of scripture.
In this way, the Word of God may dwell richly in all. It's necessary that the Bible be translated so that the Word of God can dwell richly in all. So the command is to let the Word of God dwell richly in all.
If that's necessary that we do that, that means first of all, the Bible must be accessible. Secondly, it means the Bible must be shareable. And thirdly, it means the Bible must be adaptable. You must be allowed to adapt into another language or even in the song as it describes here.
So that means further adaptions beyond just basic translation. In the preface to the Genevan Psalter, John Calvin explained how putting the hymns in meter, which requires a more creative style of translation, was necessary in order that the people could let it dwell in their hearts, could really meditate on it and keep it to themselves as they're singing the Psalms.
That really is at odds with what a lot of people think about the Word of God. People use copyright a lot of times to restrict the translation of the Word or uses beyond that in commentaries, etc. But if the Word of God is to dwell richly in all, then any kind of restriction on that is contrary to what this verse is commanding.
And yeah, I think that this era needs more clarity on that topic. 1 .9. The infallible rule for interpreting scripture is the scripture itself. Therefore, when there is a question about the true and full meaning of any part of scripture, and each passage has only one meaning, not many, it must be understood in light of other passages that speak more clearly.
So a lot of times this is called the Analogia Fide, the analogy of faith. More technically, I believe it's called the Analogia Scriptura, which is the analogy of scripture. Basically, the scripture interprets scripture, and then the Analogia Fide, the analogy of faith, is just that doctrine interprets doctrine.
When you are trying to understand the Bible, you don't understand it in isolation, but you allow all of scripture to interpret that passage. And then having arrived at doctrine from scripture, you only interpret scripture in a way that is consistent with that doctrine.
This necessarily involves a cyclical process where you come to conclusions one time, and then you refine those conclusions, etc., etc. But this is the way that scripture should be read. The clearer scripture interpreting, the less clear.
When it talks about the infallible rule, once again, it's responding to Roman Catholicism. It's not the magisterium, it's not the pope that is the ultimate infallible interpreter of scripture, it is scripture itself.
One good example of the clear passages interpreting the less clear is in 1 Samuel 15. In 1 Samuel 15, it says at one point that God regretted making Saul king. So a lot of people look at that, and they say, because they're reading it in isolation, oh, well, it's possible for God to make mistakes, or it's possible for God to change his mind, it's possible for God to have his emotions tampered with by this created world, for example.
But later on in that same chapter, God says, I'm not man that I should repent or change my mind. So he uses the same word, depending on which translation you read, either regret or repent. He uses the same word where before it says he did regret, and then later it says he can't regret.
So which passage needs to interpret the other passage? Well, whenever the Bible talks about God's actions, they're necessarily anthropomorphic, they're necessarily analogous to what his actual actions are.
He doesn't really see things, for example, when it talks about him looking down and observing. He does not see as man sees. He's not gathering information. He just already knows all things. He has ambition.
He does not have wings when it talks about us being protected under his wing, things like that. So those passages about his actions are anthropomorphic, but passages about his being do directly tell us about his being.
So when it says that he's not a man that he should regret, then that should tell us, oh yes, certainly God cannot make mistakes. He can't change his mind. So when we see a statement describing him changing his mind, we have to qualify that necessarily, that this is just talking about his negative disposition towards those events that have taken place.
It's not really talking about him changing.
This statement here, it says each passage has only one meaning, not many. But I'm thinking about certain prophecies pointing to some sort of immediate fulfillment and then a later fulfillment in Christ or in the New Testament.
Or I'm thinking of the Davidic covenant where God says, your son will sit on the throne and build for me a temple, and that's fulfilled in Solomon and in Christ. So do those passages have one meaning, or do they have two?
CB Yeah, so those are different aspects.
Of the one sense. What this is trying to address is a historical form of interpretation, and it's the quadriga. And so I'm trying to look up what the different aspects of the quadriga because I've forgotten.
But let's see. It is the literal sense, the allegorical sense, the tropological sense, which is like the moral implications of the passage, and then the anagogical sense, which is pointing forward to future things.
So yeah, the Reformers were responding to the quadriga saying that the way that that form of a fourfold sense of scripture is being used, it was being abused. Now, they had a qualified sense in which they would affirm the quadriga.
I think it was Perkins in his book, The Reformed Catholic, where he describes that there's a sense in which we can take scripture allegorically, tropologically, anagogically. We don't deny that completely.
It's just that those, when done rightly, are ultimately one sense. We're not permitted to just take scripture in completely different ways without being hinged back to the literal. Did I answer your question or did I just ramble about the thing I wanted to ramble about?
CB. Yeah. Yeah, that was related. It was.
CB. Yeah. So, it's one meaning, but different aspects of one meaning, right? CB. Yes. CB. If we see Jacob having a dream about angels going up and down the ladder, there is the very literal thing that he is witnessing, but then there's what that's pointing to, right?
And Christ says, you will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. So, ultimately, it is pointing forward to Christ being the ladder, the gateway to Heaven.
Mhm. But the Davidic covenant is pointing towards two things, right? It's pointing towards Solomon and it's pointing towards Christ. CB. Right. I would say that it's.
Ultimately pointing to Christ, and then there is an immediate fulfillment that.
Reinforces what it's pointing to. Yeah. I'm trying to think of another.
Good passage like that. But yeah, you do have Isaiah 7 and 8, which gives the Immanuel prophecy. Isaiah 7 gives the Immanuel prophecy, and Isaiah 8 is fulfilled through Isaiah's own son that before he's very old, the nations that are prophesied will be destroyed are.
But ultimately, it's pointing forward to Jesus who is truly God with us in a fuller sense, etc. So, yeah, I'm not sure I have the right vocabulary to tease that out precisely. But yeah, ultimately, the language that the reformers would have been fine with is saying it is one sense, but multiple aspects of one sense rather than distinct senses.
110. The Supreme Judge for deciding all religious controversies and for evaluating all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, human teachings, and individual interpretations, and in whose judgment we are to rest, is nothing but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit.
In this Scripture, our faith finds its final word. Okay. So, Scripture is the ultimate authority. Councils are not an authority above Scripture. Once again, neither is the magisterium, nor the pope's not the final authority.
There's just just Scripture. All right. Well, today we're looking at the doctrine of the Trinity, which is, of course, one that is confusing for a lot of people. But while it's impossible to fully comprehend God, it doesn't have to be that confusing.
There's some simple truths that the Bible points us to. But first, paragraph 1 of chapter 2 just talks about the nature of God himself. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God, whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and withal, most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.".
All right, so it starts off with the fact that there's only one God. Of course, monotheism is at the core of Christianity. There is only one God. There are not other gods. It says his subsistence, which is his existence, is in and of himself.
He is not dependent on anything else. The technical term for this is that he is asse, asse meaning, you know, without any kind of dependency. His being is just of himself. Next, it says that he is infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself.
Some people get confused about this because they think this means that he can't be known at all. It's not saying that he can't be comprehended in the colloquial way that we use the word comprehend. It means it in the sense of having comprehensive knowledge, right?
You can't fully know him for one, but then you also can't have even a partial knowledge that would be the kind that would be examining him from the outside as one who is greater than him, looking at him, inspecting him.
You can't really comprehend anything if you're talking about full understanding. We probably don't even fully comprehend small animals like, I don't know, lab rats or whatever, but we comprehend in the sense of inspecting them from outside as a creature that's greater.
But God can't be comprehended by anything in either of those senses because he is greater than all things, and in him we live, move, and have our being. Goes on, says he is a most pure spirit. So he is, yeah, not, he doesn't have a body.
Spirit's getting at several things, though. It's getting at the not just that he is immaterial. He's obviously not spirit in the same way angels are because angels, we're talking about some kind of immaterial substance, and he's not that, right?
It's not like he's made of the same kind of stuff angels are made of. We're made of matter, and God's made of the different kind of thing that angels are. He's completely different than all his creation, but he's spirit in that he's material.
He's spirit in that he's personal. We may use the word spirit. Spirits even have physical location. You know, it talks about angels traveling around, that kind of thing. It would be another kind of way where God is not like angelic spirits, right?
His, when we call him a spirit, we're not talking about him being a, occupying a point in space. Obviously, body, parts, or passions, maybe invisible is not so obvious. He's not physically seeable. It's just that, yeah, the idea of seeing him in completeness is something that's unattainable.
The Bible says that no one has seen him, nor can they, right? There's a way that we will see God in the blessed vision when we're resurrected and we see the resurrected Christ. We will behold God in a full sense that involves our physical sight, but yeah, ultimately, there's something that transcends even man's ability to just absorb God by senses.
Yeah, go for it. No, go for it.
So, if we're made in God's image, how does that tie into what you were saying where we have no idea what he looks like?
Jared, well, I'm not saying that he looks like something and we don't know. I'm saying that the senses in which we might call him visible or talk about the different narratives in scripture where Moses, for example, sees the backside of God, or even that we will see God in Christ in the fullest sense, or the disciples that had the kind of precursor to that in the transfiguration.
All of those are things where God is condescending to communicate himself to us by vision, right? But given that God is not a physical thing to be seen, and given that him in his essence is not yeah, it just can't be communicated in such a complete sense, right?
I mean, we can know him. He does make himself knowable, but it's by a condescension that he makes himself knowable. Let's see. Was there something else I was going to say with that? I don't think so. All right, it says he's without body parts or passion, so he has no body.
Oh, right, you had asked about, sorry, the image of God. Mormons teach that that is something physical, like that is captured by the fact that we have two arms and two legs, and there might be something to be said about us being upright, unlike the other creation that reflects God's uprightness or something like that.
So, I wouldn't deny all visible aspects of the image of God, but yeah, for example, for the Mormon, they would say, oh no, that reflects the fact that God has two arms, two legs, etc., and that's where I would say no.
Yeah, we don't reflect the image in that sense, even if there are some aspects of the way God created us physically that reflect his character, like being upright. Or a mind and a heart. Right, yes. Yeah, being rational.
Yeah, being able to interact with creation, have dominion over it, and these are different ways that God has created man in his image, and that's being restored as we're being made new in Christ. Okay, he is without body.
We were just talking about that. He's without parts. So, the technical way of talking about this is that he is simple, right? And that doesn't mean that he's simplistic. It just means that he is not composed of multiple parts, right?
He's not complex. If you know mathematics, there are there's the complex numbers, right? Wow, I am my math brain, you know, I studied math in college, but now I'm like second-guessing myself about this right now.
But yeah, if you have an imaginary number added to a real number, right, you've got an imaginary part and a real part, and this is a complex number because it has two parts, right? So, God is not complex.
He is simple because he does not have parts to him. So, when we talk about the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, these are not different parts of God that additively come together to form him or anything like that.
If he were composed of parts, those would be more fundamental than himself, and therefore, in a sense, greater than himself. And yeah, nothing can be nothing can be greater than God. We see that several times in the Bible with the way it speaks of God because things that people might think of as parts of him, like his love or his holiness, the Bible speaks as being identical to him.
The Bible says God is love. It also says that he can't swear by anything higher than himself, so he swears by himself. It says that in Hebrews 6. But then it says in the Psalms that he swears by his holiness.
So, how is that okay for him to swear by his holiness? Well, he is his holiness. Like, he just is. And these different aspects, you know, these different ways that we might consider him are not parts of him.
They just are him.
And the Trinity are three separate persons.
Distinct, yeah. We try to avoid the word separate because that might suggest the separation, right? But yes, three distinct persons. And we'll get to that in paragraph three. There's some interesting things there about the language it uses because this confession does not speak of him as persons the same way that the Westminster Confession that it's based on does.
Okay. It goes on and says that he's without passions. Another technical term, he is impassable. So, this doesn't mean that he's not zealous or does not care about things in any kind of sense. When it says that he's without passions, that means that he can't be moved by something as a passive object, right?
Like, for example, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but in feminism, when feminists or, you know, first-wave feminists talked about not objectifying women, I think it was first-wave feminists, they talked about not objectifying women.
It's not actually about treating them as inanimate objects. That's what a lot of people think of when they think of objectifying women. It's about making them objects of the sentence where the man is acting on them.
So, like, when you talk about a couple marrying, you usually say that the man marries the woman, and less often when you talk about the woman marrying the man. And so, the feminist, you know, objects to that because you're objectifying women by making her the object of the sentence rather than the subject of the sentence.
So, in a similar way, when we talk about God being impassable, we're saying that he's not the object of a sentence such that he could be acted on, right, and changed. When the Bible talks about him growing angry or talks about him growing pleased with something, this is just anthropomorphic language to describe the way that we experience him.
It's not describing real changes in him as though that he could, by some kind of external stimulus, be changed. And some people will try to modify this and say, oh, well, the outside world can't change God, but he could change himself.
And that's still problematic. He's eternal, as we'll see in a minute. He doesn't change. And part of that is not just that he doesn't change in bigger categories. It's just any category at all. He does not change.
He is impassable. And we can answer similar questions about words like emotions and things like that. Does God have emotions? Well, we might use those terms anthropomorphically describing him as a man.
The Bible does that all the time, but that does not mean that he has movement like emotion describes a change in my state of zeal about something. And it says, who alone hath immortality. So while we have immortal souls, it is because God has created us that way.
All life is coming from him. Life is of him. He is dwelling in light, which no man can approach unto. That's from 1 Timothy. Yeah, this is connected to the idea of people not being able to either fully comprehend him and also him being invisible.
He is immutable. That means that he cannot change, which we've already covered. He's the same yesterday and forever. And when we speak of Christ being the same yesterday and today and forever, we're speaking of him as God as man.
You know, he changes. He was a baby, is not now, you know, that kind of thing. But when we're talking about, but when Hebrews 13 speaks of him as the same yesterday and today and forever, it's talking about his divine attribute of immutability.
And he is also immense. That might be a weird word to think about God as immense because typically people use that term to mean big, right? And God isn't really big. Might call him big, but he doesn't really take up space.
He transcends space. Immense means he's without measure. Now, a lot of people will use the term omnipresent. And once again, that's an okay term to speak of God. And it reminds us that we are always within his gaze, so to speak.
But he's not really on the present in the sense of actually being in space everywhere. He transcends space itself. He's not measured by it. It's not just that he fills it. He transcends it altogether.
And the same is true of his eternality. He transcends time. He's not, you know, walking along the dimension of time or filling the dimension of time. And if you ever hear a theologian talk about God's omni-temporality or something like that, what they're trying to do is put God in time so that he experiences time.
And they're trying to do this to make him more relatable to us or something because they think that if he's eternal and unchangeable or impassable, that he's not really able to relate to creation. They want to put him in time.
So, there are theologians like, I think, John Frame and then also William Lane Craig, right? William Lane Craig, he also talks about this kind of thing, like God being in time, right? That's all problematic.
So, what's the difference between talking about God as if he's in time to make him more relatable and what the Bible does when it anthropomorphizes God to make him more relatable?
Yeah, so I would say that that is, your answer is in your question. Because it's anthropomorphizing him, it is not communicating in those instances technical statements about his being. Just like last time, I mentioned 1 Samuel 15 which says in the same chapter that he regretted that he made Saul king and then later says that he's God, that he's not man, that he should regret anything.
So, you have statements about him anthropomorphically describing his actions in a way that we can understand a little, his disposition towards evil things or good things. And then we also have language describing his actual being where it denies that he could change.
So, yeah, it's fine to speak of him anthropomorphically. And what I'm pointing out with the term omnipresent is ultimately that is anthropomorphic. People think of that as a technical statement about God's being, but it's really not.
He's not omnipresent. He is immense. He transcends space itself. And yeah, the fact that God is eternal, that he transcends time, and that he created all things including, you know, ourselves which experience time.
I don't know if you can really call time a thing to be created, but he created things with temporal aspects. That means that there are two, well, there are two theories about time. There's A theory and B theory.
Have you ever heard of this before? So, the A theory of time basically says that every moment exists in a, yeah, every moment exists like in its own little way, right? And so with this time travel would be possible.
You could like snap back to that previous moment or something because it's kind of like all existing or it's a, let me start over. Sorry. A theory, sorry. A theory says that this moment is the only moment that really exists.
Okay. So, this is how most people think about time, right? Is we're kind of moving along this axis and it's, and the past is just a memory, right? The future is something that's not really there. But if all are available to God in a sense, right?
If he transcends time itself and this moment is as close to him as when he first created things as to a thousand years into the new heavens and the new earth, then actually B theory is the correct theory.
That's the one where all the moments have an equal sort of existence. But that also implies that time travel is not possible because any kind of like time travel requires A theory. Like every single time travel movie is operating on some variation of A theory.
Yeah. Because if all these moments like considered on their own are fixed, you can't really travel between them. Like that's just not what time would be. Okay. Continuing on is in principle, we talked about him not being comprehending but himself.
It does say in 1 Corinthians 2 that who can know him except for his own, you know, his own spirit, who can know the mind of God. What's incredible about that is that it says we have the mind of God. So this is not denying once again, not denying that we can't know him at all.
In fact, we're given the mind of God by the spirit in order that we might have a knowledge of him that is a very real and true knowledge of him. Even though we ourselves are not omniscient or able to know everything or even able to comprehend God by our own faculties, but him giving us his mind gives us an avenue by which we might have some knowledge of him.
That is a true knowledge beyond that which the unbeliever would have where they would know God, but in a way that is where they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness and not able to know him in a way where they're humbly submitting to him.
All right. He is almighty. So he's all-powerful, right? You're probably familiar with the notion of omnipotence. He is almighty. In other words, he is omnipotent. He is in every way infinite. He is most holy, that meaning he's unlike anything else in creation.
Holiness can refer to righteousness, and with God it does. But even before man sinned, it's not just that, oh, well, God hasn't sinned. Even before man sinned, God is holy. He is distinct from creation.
He's most wise. He is omnisapient. That's a word that means all-wise instead of just omniscient, which means all-knowing. He is most free. He is able to do all the things that he desires to do. Nothing is preventing him from doing those things.
He is most absolute. That means that all things are measured by him. It's not that God is not loving because he conforms to some external standard of love. He is loving because he just is love, and he's measured by himself.
So he is perfect because he is the standard of perfection. All other things are to be measured by him. That shows you the folly of what the world says about, well, that action of God doesn't seem very loving.
Well, what is loving? What's this measuring stick of love that you're using to decide what he is? You could only measure him by yourself. You could claim that he's inconsistent if you're trying to give some kind of critique, right?
Like, if I were evaluating some other God that claimed to be the standard of love, this would be the way of going about it, right? Showing that he is inconsistent with his own definition of love. But you can't just bring in some definition because then you're denying the whole, yeah, that's an external critique.
You're starting off from a completely different premise. But God just is love, and so he is absolute. He is working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will. So he's sovereign.
All things are being worked by the counsel of his most wise will. This is just summing up these things about him being wise and free, etc. And he's doing this for his own glory, not that he grows in glory inherently, but rather in his intrinsic glory.
His own intrinsic glory cannot be grown, but his extrinsic glory, that glory as considered by how much creation is recognizing that he is glorious, that grows. And so he does these things for his creation to recognize his glory.
He's most loving, gracious, meaning he grants unmerited favor. He is merciful, meaning that he is forgiving, and he does not bring all the punishments that are deserved because he forgives, but we'll see that he is just in a moment.
He is long-suffering. He's patient. He is abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. It's the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. That is an important part of our faith, according to Hebrews 11 .6.
And with all most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, who will by no means clear the guilty? Now you may wonder, how can it say that when it also says that he is merciful? Well, the answer is that when he is merciful, there is still an accounting for it, and we have that mercy in Jesus Christ who still suffered.
So there is justice done for all sin. Any questions on this first paragraph? I know this is a dense one.
I've got a question about this most free. You said that he's most free to do the things that he wants, but we know that there are things that he cannot do. He cannot lie. He cannot sin because it's against his nature.
And so we also, as humans, do things according to what we desire. How are we different in that respect?
Well, we're often stymied in our pursuits, right? We might want to do something, but then be inhibited in it. Or we might even want to do good, but because of the corruption of our wills, we're not able to do good.
Paul talks about desiring to do good, but then not being able to. The very thing he hates, he does.
The good that he desires to do isn't part of his old flesh nature. That's part of his new nature in Christ.
So there are different readings of Romans 7. Some take it historically to be him before he's converted. The traditional reading is that it's after he's converted. So, sorry, you're asking. Sorry, go ahead and repeat the question.
If God is most free to do the things that he desires, but we know that he's not free to do the things that are against his nature, he cannot lie. But also, if we, in our nature of total depravity, do the things that we want to do, are we free in the same sense?
So there's one definition of freedom you could use that it would be in the same sense. Yes, because if you just really make it just the basic, I act on my desires, and that's all freedom means, then yes, we act on our desires.
God acts on his. Once again, not as though he's traveling through time and encountering new desires or anything like that. But then if you make it that he is not at war within himself the way that we are at war within ourselves, you know, the flesh desire against the spirit, right?
There's no internal conflict within him, first of all. Secondly, there's no external factors that inhibit him in in doing those things that he would do, like there would be with us, or we might want something and it being out of our grasp, right?
So he's in those senses, he is free, and we are not. One of those is as fallen creatures, we're not free, and then the other is even just as creatures, period, we're not free the way that he is free. All right, anything else about chapter or paragraph 1?
All right, let's go on to paragraph 2. God, having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself, is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creature which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.
He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things. And he hath most sovereign dominion over all his creatures, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth.
In his sight all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite and fallible and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels and all his works and in all his commands.
To him is due from angels and men whatsoever worship, service, or obedience as creatures they owe unto their creator, and whatever he is further pleased to require of him. All right, so God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself.
Yeah, those all are different things. Hopefully they're kind of hard to define each one without just using the word itself, but yes, he has goodness in himself. He has blessedness in himself. Blessedness is like contentedness.
It's having everything you need, and so when we call him blessed, you know, we are referring to him as a fountain of all goodness. When we're blessed, typically we're talking about ourselves receiving God's goodness.
He is alone, self-sufficient, not needing anything, and like I already mentioned, he's not deriving any glory from them, so when he does things for his glory or to increase his glory, it's not his intrinsic glory because that can't be increased.
Rather, it's an extrinsic glory as others are recognizing that he is glorious, and then yeah, he manifests his glory in, by, unto, and upon them. Okay, he's the fountain of all being. Everything receives its being from him.
We are distinct beings, but yeah, we come from him, and then he has most sovereign dominion over all the creatures, so he has authority over all to do with them as he pleases. You know, the potter doesn't have the right, or the clay does not have the right to look at the potter and ask, what are you doing?
Because yeah, he has authority over all of us to do as he pleases. He sees all things in his sight. All things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain.
So the fact that his knowledge is infinite, we've already talked about him being omniscient. It's infallible, right? He doesn't make mistakes with his knowledge and what he believes will happen. He's not looking down the corridors of time and making the best guess.
You can think of God, once again, this is a bit of an anthropomorphism, but you can think of him as looking at a film strip, you know, knowing all the moments of all time. He's not making best guesses about the future, like the open theist would say.
The open theist would say that God is omniscient and that he knows all things that can be known, but because the future doesn't exist yet, he's just making a very good guess being, you know, understanding our inward parts and everything about what we will do in the future, but he can't.
They would say he can't fully know, but of course, as it says here, he does fully know all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is not dependent upon the creature. Once again, for the open theist, they make him dependent upon the creature as man makes different actions, etc., and as God goes through time and experiences, for the open theist, God is changing in his knowledge, and he's changing as he's observing things.
And this is how people, a lot of times, even, you know, true Christians imagine God. The Bible talks about him looking down and seeing things, and so they imagine his knowledge being deductive. You know, he is looking down, and he's learning things.
He may be learning very quickly, but, you know, he's observing, and it's because he sees things that he then knows them. But he's intuitive. He doesn't need to observe anything in order to already know it.
He just intuits his knowledges. He simply is.
Because he created all things. Yeah, it's an anthropomorphism that implies not only that.
He has all knowledge, but also that he tests us. You know, it's implying that he might see something that would need correction, that sort of thing. So I think that imagery is doing more than just talking about him being omniscient.
Yeah, and in being independent upon the creature, think even of the Arminian, right? The Arminian says, well, God knows all things. He is omniscient. They wouldn't be like the open theist who say that God is learning things.
But then they would say, well, God knows that I will make this action because I will make this action. And what are they doing? They're making God's knowledge of the future dependent upon them as a creature, right?
Not because God made them that way, not because the potter fashioned the clay in this particular way, like Romans 9 would say, but instead because there's something about me that transcends God's creative activity and his design that, you know, is my free will.
And because I will take those actions in the future and God sees those, he has this knowledge of the future. And so, they've made God in his own essence because his knowledge is part of his essence dependent upon the creature.
That's, yeah, that's just utterly problematic. Yeah, he's most holy in all his counsels and all his works and all his commands, and so all must worship him. He is due all worship, and he is free to require anything of us, not just those things written on our hearts.
He may require anything extra from us as well.
Any questions? I don't know if this is an appropriate question for this time, but could you elaborate on God's sovereign dominion relative to his moral will, his sovereign will?
Yeah, we are going to talk about his decree in chapter 3, so that's coming up right next. Right. All right, 2 -3, in this divine and infinite being, there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word, or Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Of one substance, power and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, all infinite without beginning, therefore but one God who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on him.
So, in this one divine and infinite being, there are three subsistences, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, this is the phrase in the Westminster Confession, which this is based on, says persons, there are three persons, and that's probably the way that you're used to hearing this spoken of, the Father, Son, and Spirit are three persons, and that's perfectly appropriate, but what's going on when we're using the word person is we're taking something that we're familiar with and using that word to describe God because it captures several aspects of his threeness, right?
There are certain actions that you can, there are actions that you can ascribe to different persons, right? And that is part of personality, is that one is responsible for certain actions. So, the Father particularly elects, you know, the Son went to the cross, you don't say that of the Father, you don't say the Father went to the cross, etc.
They have these distinct identities, yet ultimately, the term person doesn't really describe what the threeness of God is, it just kind of describes some howness, I guess, of his threeness, right? Or communicate some aspects of his threeness, the term person.
What subsistence is trying to do is actually say what those three things, if I can use the word thing, that's kind of inappropriate because God isn't multiple substances, he's only one substance. But what is his threeness?
And the answer is he has three subsistences, and this one being there, three subsistences. Subsistence, you'll notice, is the term that was used in the first paragraph. It talked about his subsistence being of himself.
So, the word subsistence is just being, right, God's existence. He has, in one sense, he exists, and so he just has one existence. But his three modes of existence, he exists ungenerated, he exists of the Father, and then God also exists of the Father and the Son, proceeding from the Father and the Son.
And so, each of these modes of existence are the three persons of the Trinity. And there's a lot of ways that I even said those phrases that might raise questions, like why are we talking about God when we're not, when we're speaking about the being of God as he, when isn't that a personal thing?
Well, yeah, God is personal, so even when you're talking about the substance of God, it's appropriate to call him he even when you don't have a particular person in mind. You're talking about three persons being in him.
So, there are people who will deny that the being of God is personal because they want to say, well, we don't want to have four persons, you know, the being of God, and then three. But that would imply that these three are attached onto him, but they aren't substances, right?
They are subsistences. They are the modes of existence of God. Now, sometimes when I use the term mode of existence, that sets off alarm bells for some people because they're familiar with the doctrine known as modalism, also known as Sabellianism, which is, in today's world, that's pretty much only practiced by what's known as Oneness Pentecostals.
So, this is the idea that God has different modes of manifestation, that he sometimes appears as the Father and sometimes appears as the Son, sometimes appears as the Spirit, or maybe he appears as several simultaneously, kind of phasing between them or something.
That's not what I'm saying. Those modes of manifestation are basically saying that God appears to be three outwardly, but then there is no real threeness inwardly. I'm acknowledging that there is a real threeness inwardly in that God is, yeah, in that the persons, the subsistences are real.
There is God the Father, he is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. There is the Son who is of the Father, there is the Spirit who is of the Father and the Son. And that is what those persons are.
That is their property. So, when we talk about the attributes of God, we're talking about his, we're talking about the different ways we can speak of his being, but when we talk about his properties, what we're talking about is the things that are specific to those persons.
And in particular, those properties are being ungenerate, being degenerate, and proceeding from the Father and the Son, which is also known as spiration because it is how the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son.
Okay, let's see. Yeah, he's infinite without beginning. Yeah, he is one God and they all share that one essence and it is undivided. It's not like the Spirit has a third of God and the Son has a third, his own third, etc.
They each share that essence and the essence is undivided. And because in that essence is the Father, Son, Spirit. This is known as perichoresis or also, I believe it's also called circumincession, I think is the Latin term instead of the Greek term being perichoresis.
This is just the idea that, once again, because there's no separation of them and because they each have the essence and the essence undivided, that they all dwell within each other. There are weird modern theologies that promote the idea that perichoresis is ultimately fulfilled in us as we kind of get absorbed into this, what's known as the divine dance.
That's all Eastern Orthodox theology that for some reason has been adopted a lot by this guy named Richard Rohr who's a Roman Catholic. And for some reason, evangelicals without a lot of foundations have adopted this.
So I don't know how it made that transition from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism to evangelicals, but it's out there. But that's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about perichoresis. I'm talking about something specific to God.
All right. Yeah, and this is the foundation of our communion with God and our comfortable dependence on Him. He would not be, now some people would deny this, but I think it can be plainly said that He would not be knowable, period, apart from being Trinity.
A Unitarian God just would not be knowable for a number of different reasons. God communicates by His Word. That's the anthropomorphic way that we see it described, but we know that His Word is His Son.
There's a sense in which we know God because of His Word, because He communicates to us, revealing Himself through Christ, and then particularly in salvation by the Spirit in us. But even in all creation, the way that God is communicating through creation is a Trinitarian activity.
This is not something that a unipersonal God or a Unitarian God would be capable doing. Unitarian God referring to one that's not Trinity, right, that's just a single person. But then when it comes to salvation, this should be more evident.
We are saved because of Christ's perfect sacrifice on the cross. A lot of people that don't understand the Trinity mock this, and they say, oh, well, God is sacrificing Himself to Himself or something.
No, that's not what's happening. The Son is offering His own life up to the Father in place of His people. And otherwise, if it were just a Unitarian God, if we had a Unitarian God, it would be that farce that everyone makes fun of, right?
It would be just God offering Himself to Himself. There would be no real sacrifice to satisfy His wrath because it would just be, yeah, the equivalent of Him just doing a charade and then saying that He forgives us when there was no real offering that's made to Him.
But since we have Father and Son and Spirit, we have the means of salvation. So this is not just a heady doctrine, and I know I've kind of been kind of, I don't want to say exhaustive because it's far from exhaustive, but I know I'm hitting on a lot of these headier points.
But ultimately, the Trinity, apart from it, we don't have a comfortable religion. We don't have the God of all comforts. Any questions? All right. Let's move on to decree. Let's see. Yeah, let's just, let's aim to just do three.
All right. God hath decreed in Himself from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears His wisdom in disposing all things in power and faithfulness and accomplishing His decree.
Okay, so God has decreed all things, and He's done this in Himself, right? This is something that occurs even apart from there being a creation. It's not that He creates and then He makes a decree. His decree is just happening within Himself apart from creation, from all eternity, so outside of time as well.
By the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, so not after having examined things and collected information in order to receive some kind of counsel, either from persons or any kind of creature, right?
Even examining the world to determine something would be a receiving of counsel. God doesn't receive any kind of counsel like that. He determined all this freely, as we've just talked about, and unchangeably.
He hasn't changed His mind. He doesn't regret, and He has done this for all things. All things come to pass by Him. The Proverbs say that the lot is cast in the lap, but every decision is from the Lord.
Every single thing that happens comes from God. Yeah, whatsoever comes to pass. Yet, and that includes evil, but He is not the author of sin. Now, this is a technical way of speaking of God, to say that He's not the author of sin.
That's not to say that He's not the author of all history. Of course He is. He determined all things that come to pass, even sin. That's what this is affirming. So, if you're going to use author in that colloquial sense, you could say that He's the author of history, including the sins that would take place.
But He does not force anybody to sin. No one acts under compulsion where He's pressing them to sin. He is not the one who acts directly. Rather, He permits man to act in sin. Hey, yeah, He doesn't have fellowship with any kind of sin.
There's no violence offered to the will of the creature. Like I said, they're not acting by compulsion. He's not forcing them. Nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
So, a lot of people think, well, if God has decreed all things, then that means that there's no real free will. Well, there is a chapter on free will later. We do believe in free will. In fact, apart from God decreeing creation as such, there wouldn't be a free will, because where would it come from?
If it doesn't come from God, then it can't come from anywhere. All things come from Him. A lot of people imagine that they've got this free will that comes outside of God's decree, but who created it?
If God created it, it comes from Him. There's really no alternative. How does it operate? According to His design or not? He doesn't create something that then functions in a way that He didn't fathom.
So, yeah, the same is true with other kinds of second causes like gravity. Gravity is a real force. God's not putting His fingers into space and pushing things downward. That's how a lot of people imagine things, too, is that, well, if God is decreeing all things and He's actually the one minutely causing all things to take place, certainly He is the first cause of all things.
He is upholding the whole world by the power of His Word, et cetera. But He has created real forces like the forces of physics. He has created creatures with free will, and those second causes are legitimate, and they are established by His decree.
It's essentially just automation.
Some things are automation, right? And He's free to work against those, as we'll see when we go to His providence. But yes, some of these things He has created to operate on their own with His general upholding.
Yeah, and so He displays His wisdom by His decree. The fact that He has arranged all things shows that He is wise. A lot of people look at the world around them and they say, well, this shows that God, if He exists, is just a fool or not powerful.
You know, the problem of evil is you've got to give one of these away. You've got to say God either isn't loving or isn't all-powerful. The reality is we don't see it all. We can't understand all the harmonies right now.
We have untrained ears to hear the music of God, but on that final day, all His wisdom will be displayed in how He had arranged everything. And even now, the one who permits Him to interpret what He is doing will see quite a bit of His wisdom in how He arranged things.
You know, who understood the wisdom of the cross until afterward? Not even the disciples who were told repeatedly that He would go to the cross. Did they understand that? Although God knoweth whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, He has not decreed anything because He foresees the future, whereas that which would come to pass upon such conditions.
So, the notion of hypotheticals are not contrary to God's decree. I know some Calvinists who believe in God's decree who would not tolerate any sort of hypotheticals like, well, if this thing had happened, and they would say, oh, well, it's not even worth talking about such things.
Jesus speaks that way. Jesus says, if the works that have been done in you have been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would still stand to this day. So, yes, God knows what would happen upon such conditions because He has designed all things, and He knows if He had created something differently, what the implications of that would be.
But He doesn't decree anything because He sees it in the future. He's just not looking in the future to see what would happen and then changing things, right? I don't know if you all are familiar with the, I forget if the original Philip K. Dick short story was named this, but the movie Paycheck, I think it stars Ben Affleck, it's been a long time since I saw it.
But I used to read a lot of Philip K. Dick, he's a sci-fi author. And in this, a guy, hopefully it doesn't spoil too much of the movie, but a guy's able to see into the future and manipulate it just by putting a few items in a bag that he will then open up later when he's lost his memories.
And so, he's able to know exactly how he will respond to the different items in the bag. And so, this is not what God's doing, right? God's not looking into the future and deciding, okay, if I create it this way, what will happen?
If I create it this way, what will happen? He's the one who's arranging all things so that it will happen that way. All right, yeah, once again, this is not the Arminian idea of looking through the corridors of time and seeing what man will do.
That's what a lot of people say. They look at the language about election and decree and so on, predestination. They say, all right, well, or they use that statement from Luther that on this side, it says, all who enter on that side of the gate in heaven, it'll say the elect or something like that, right?
And people want to make it so that basically, he's making some kind of decree based on such observations. But yeah, he's not doing that. He is electing and decreeing on the counsel of his own will, not the counsel of anything else.
Paragraph 3, by the decree of God for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated or foreordained to eternal life through Jesus Christ to the praise of his glorious grace, others being left to act in their sin to their just condemnation.
Let's see, others being left to act in their sin to their just condemnation to the praise of his glorious justice. All right, so some men and angels are predestined to eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Now, it is interesting that it includes angels. It's also interesting that it talks about this being through Jesus Christ. I do think that preposition is intentional. It says through Jesus Christ and not in him.
We are elected in Christ and that we have union in him and like a covenant status, us being joined to him. Even his humanity is necessary for that, but he did not come to save angels. He didn't take on the nature of angels.
So when angels are elected through him, it's a different kind of election, right? God has made a decree. It's the same in that sense, but it's different in the sense of the mechanism by which Christ is united to them.
He's united to us in a very profound sense. He is united to them, of course, you can't deny that it's profound, but perhaps less profound because it doesn't come through the incarnation and through the crucifixion and resurrection, the particular Atonement that he has made.
But yeah.
If we were saved in Christ, we'll be judging the angels, right? Yes. So maybe that's the connection because if we were not in Christ, we would not be judging the angels. Is there a connection?
The connection being that the judgment happens because they are elected through him. The thing is, we won't actually be judging these angels. The Bible only speaks of us judging the wicked angels from what I understand.
Not that it's very specific in 1 Corinthians 6, but as you get to the very end of our confession, it specifically talks about wicked angels being judged, and I believe that's to deny that anyone who did not sin will be judged, right?
Only those who sin will be judged, which includes righteous people, wicked people, and also wicked angels, but not righteous angels because they never sinned. So yeah, this all happens to the praise of his glorious justice, and yeah, others are permitted to continue in their sin.
So people always have questions about double predestination. Yeah, it's okay to talk about double predestination. I would say that ultimately that is true, that the reprobate, those who are permitted to continue in their condemnation are, but we shouldn't pretend as though those are symmetric, right?
God, when he by his hand of mercy upholds someone, is doing something different than permitting someone to sin, right? It's not that he's making these exalted, and he's pushing these guys down, right?
He's not making anybody sin. So double predestination, true, but not symmetric. Okay, did you have a question? No, okay. All right, these angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably signed, and their number so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
Yes, so there's a particular number. It is not just groups. That's what a lot of people will do. A lot of Armenians will feel the need to affirm the biblical language of election and predestination, and they'll say, well, what's being elected is group.
It's the church that's being elected, or it's Israel that's being elected. And so they'll look at Romans 9, and they'll say, well, you see Pharaoh and Moses represented nations, and Jacob and Esau represented nations.
So when it's talking about them being elected, it's not really focusing on the individual, it's focusing on the group. And so you're free to move in and out of the group that's elected. It's not really you who's so elected, but the group that is.
The problem is, one, those are individuals, and then two, at the end of the passage, it says, even us whom God has called from among the Gentiles. It's pretty specific. It's pretty clear that God is electing individuals, and this is a specific number.
This is not something that can be changed. It's not a group that could grow or diminish based on the free will and actions of individuals. Those of mankind that are predestinated to life, God, before the foundation of the world, was laid according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any other thing in the creature as a condition or cause moving him thereunto.
All right, so God, once again by his secret counsel, this is not, he hasn't revealed all his purposes, and this is just from himself. He's not observing anything in us to decide who he's going to elect.
He didn't say, well, I'm going to choose Nathan because of his good looks, right, or Keith because of his great wit, right? It's just God chose for his reasons, right? It is, yeah, it's not that some people were humbler when they came to him.
They're humbler because he changed them, because he regenerated them. Yeah, so nothing other than his free grace and love. I don't think I have anything else to say about that. Yes?
I was just thinking often on Easter when people give their testimonies or other times, they often say, I found Christ. And I've often said, well, no, he found you. But can you speak on that, the connection between the elect and choosing?
Yeah, the Bible says we love because he first loved us. It is true that he found us. I don't think it's wrong to say we found him, because once again, we do love him. We do find him because he found us.
And not that he found us and that he was searching for us or didn't know where we were or anything like that, but the Bible does use the parable of the one sheep away from the 99.
And the relationship was a two-way. It's not one way.
Right, yeah. So yeah, it's fine to say that. I don't have any problem with people talking about choosing Christ, etc. Now I know in certain contexts that might imply a lot more than I would be willing to agree with, but just as a general way of speaking, I don't necessarily assume that people mean anything else other than that activity that happens after regeneration where someone does or someone having been made willing to come to Christ does choose to come to him.
It often sounds like a shopping trip, you know? You're going to pick this religion or this God.
Right, yeah. And if that's what happened, then you don't truly believe, right? If you are judging God and you've determined that he's good enough for you, you might gather more information later and choose something else.
It's only when you're being judged by God and you find yourself in the palm of his hand and subject to him that you really believe by Christ, or effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.
So God has chosen the means by which we come to him. Part of the issue with the doctrine of God's decree is that a lot of think of it in a very pagan way, pagan fatalist way. You see this in a lot of fiction or fantasy movies that have a predestination component to it where there's some oracle that's happened, and something is going to take place, and it doesn't matter what anyone does try to go against that, they still find themselves in that situation regardless, right?
And that's how people imagine predestination is God has predestined the sin, and it doesn't matter what I do in the middle, I'm going to end up there. And there's a sense in which that's true because God has predestined it.
The sense in which it's not true is that he's also predestined all the means that we're going to get there as well. So it's not the situation where someone could say, oh, well, I'm going to just walk away from God, etc., and then, well, because I was already predestined, I'm going to end up in heaven anyway.
Or I could serve God my whole life, but still, because I'm predestined to hell, I'm going to just end up there anyway. That's not how it works. God has predestined all the parts. Those who are called are also justified, are also sanctified, are also adopted.
And it is only the elect for which this is true. There's not someone who has some of those means applied to them, and then it's not saved. So a lot of the reasons that people get really anxious about this doctrine or really persnickety about it is misguided because they're essentially approaching it with a pagan notion of fate.
And usually that's what's behind what's known as hyper-Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism, contrary to what the word would make you think, is actually essentially denying some aspects of predestination. They're keeping the final part of it, but then denying the means so that the means don't matter.
And then why bother evangelizing? They're either going to heaven or not. It's already been predestined. No point. Of course, no one acts like that about the other aspects of their life. It's predestined whether or not you're going to get a job, but you still apply for jobs because it's by the means of applying that you're going to get a job.
It's predestined whether or not you will have food in your stomach. But no one says, well, I'm not going to lift my hand to my mouth because it's already predestined whether or not the food will get there.
These are all silly things. God ordains the means as well as the end. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care that men attending the will of God have revealed in this word and yielding obedience thereunto may from the certainty of their effectual vocation be assured of their eternal election.
So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel. All right, so this is acknowledging what we just said, that people often get very confused by this doctrine because they don't understand that God is ordaining the means as well as the end.
And so, if it is preached inappropriately, then it will lead to the wrong sorts of things. It will lead to pride, for example, because people think, oh, I'm elect because God saw something in me, right?
If you don't understand that aspect of it, that it's because the counsel of his own secret will is not something in us, it's not because we're strong, attractive, smart, humble, whatever. It's not that God is choosing us for those reasons.
He has his reasons, but we know it's not because of some merit within us.
Jim I think it could be applied even if one is not thinking about one's own merit because you can say out of everybody, and it says, I'm thinking Matthew, the narrow gate and the wide gate, right? So, there are very few that are actually going through the narrow gate that leads to life.
And so, you could say, oh, I'm one of the chosen. Sorry, whatever reason. In other words, it has nothing to do with me, but I'm still one of the chosen. Sorry, you guys didn't make it through. There's a comparison, and whenever that comparison is there, rather than compassion,.
Sorrow. Yeah. Well, I do believe on the last day, there will be a place for a sense of victory, sense of triumph over not just Satan, but even all those who remained part of his kingdom. Isaiah closes with the picture of people worshiping God by viewing the bodies of those being tormented.
It's kind of horrible to think about from our perspective at this point in time because we are supposed to have compassion on those who are still living, etc. But I think once that matter has been decided, there's a different posture that's appropriate.
But that being said, it shouldn't lead to pride, right? It shouldn't lead to, I am inherently better than, right? There's a place for recognizing that the kingdom of Christ is better than the citizens of Christ have greater rights and greater inheritance, and it's right that they have this status.
But once again, not because of anything in them. So, it should lead to humility.
There's a little bit of a thing I've seen when sharing the gospel because you're comfortable in terms of, well, first of all, you're humbled by God's grace, but you're comfortable with God's grace because it's just showering upon you regardless of how disastrous things are going in your life.
You can have joy and suffering like John Piper often preaches. And then you go and share the gospel with somebody who's miserable and say, regardless of how miserable they are, you could still have joy.
And you try to share what you've gone through, but it still comes out a little too happy, I guess. I mean, someone that's miserable doesn't want to necessarily be around somebody that's saying, you could be happy even though you're miserable.
And this is by knowing Christ. So, I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, it's hard to communicate that sometimes when you're truly, you know, truly grateful. CBT. And people hear you as being proud. MG. Exactly.
Exactly. You have to kind of tone it down.
CBT. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard Arminians say that all Calvinists are proud, etc. And it's stuff that seems like they're just assuming or projecting, or I don't know. But I mean, all of us struggle with pride to some degree.
Every human does. But for the most part, all the Calvinists I know are very humble about the nature of their election. And then I know for me, it was a very humbling thing to come to these doctrines. And that's what most people I know say, you know, they were very humbled by it.
That doesn't mean that people don't go through a phase of, you know, zeal that's often called cage stage where it can come out in flares of pride of, you know, why doesn't everybody else get this? And it's true that people should get it.
But yeah, in general, it produces humility unless improperly handled. And then some of the other things that can be caused, it can cause someone to lose their assurance if it's improperly handled because you could think, oh, well, the end's predestined.
So the means don't mean anything. The fact that, you know, God is upholding me doesn't mean anything. But if he finishes every work that he starts, Philippians 1 .6, you can have assurance of salvation, et cetera.
So anyway, this doctrine is supposed to be preached with care in order that it not lead to false conclusions. Another thing is diligence. It should lead to diligence. A lot of people think, well, if you are just predestined, then there's no reason to, you know, serve God because you already know you're going to make it.
This is common criticism from Roman Catholics, common criticism from even Muslims against Christians that if you can know that you're saved, then that would just lead to living a lax life. But if you understand that the means and the end are connected, once again, you wouldn't entertain the notion that someone who is living a life filled with sin has any real hope of salvation.
But yeah, a lot of people do think this. There's a lot of people who go through an easy beliefism church that says if you walk the aisle, you know, you've got a guarantee of salvation. It doesn't matter what happens.
You're always going to be in the Father's hand. No one can lose their salvation, but if you walk an aisle and then live a life that is not representative of the Christian life, it means that you were never called, and so therefore, you will never be justified.
Therefore, you're never going to be sanctified, etc., you know. But yeah, if someone has seen those things in them, they have reason for assurance and hope.