The Incomparable Trinity

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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January 27, 2022

00:00: On today's program, we're going to be answering a listener question on the Doctrine of the Trinity.
00:05: Stay tuned.
00:06: Conversation with a Calvinist starts right now.
00:13: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:15: My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
00:19: Today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects, and that is the Doctrine of the Trinity.
00:25: And the reason why I say it's one of my favorite subjects is early on in my ministry training, I began to realize that even though a lot of people said that they believed in the Trinity, I mean, there's churches that are called Trinity, and of course, Christianity is a Trinitarian faith, I began to notice very early that there were a lot of people who would use the word Trinity, but didn't really know what it meant, or they were using analogies for the Trinity that were sub-biblical, that were not really describing what the Bible teaches about the Trinity.
01:05: So it became an issue for me and a focus of my ministry early on to try to help educate my church and instruct my church in the historic perspective on the Doctrine of the Trinity, and that actually became a book, one of the few books that I've actually written, and this is a very small book, I mean, it's less than 100 pages, and it's big type, so it's certainly not a huge scholarly work on the subject, but the reason why I put this book together, it's called God in Three Persons, is that I felt like it was an important subject that Christians needed to be able to at least give a basic understanding of, and so I spent the time putting this book together, and it only has five chapters, it has Chapter 1 is the Doctrine Defined, Chapter 2, the Scriptural Support of the Doctrine, Chapter 3, the Historical Support of the Doctrine, Chapter 4, Questions Concerning the Doctrine, and Chapter 5, Application of the Doctrine, and this book is really just a collection of the sermons that I did of those titles, I did sermons on this subject and talked about it, and ended up taking those notes, putting them together, and putting this book together, and this book is available basically for free for anybody who would like a copy of it, you can go on to, I have it published or printed through a print direct company called lulu.com, if you go there, lulu.com, and type in God in Three Persons, or just put my name, Keith Foskey, you'll see the other books that are available there, and they're available to have printed if you want a printed copy, or if you are interested in a digital copy, I will send you that for free, so if you are interested in God in Three Persons, a digital copy of my book, I will send you a PDF copy, all you have to do is email me at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com, and I'll be happy to send you a digital copy of the book.
03:15: I'm also thinking about working on reading the book as an audio book, recording myself reading it, and making that my first audio book that I'm considering publishing, if you think that would be helpful, send me a note, tell me if you think that's something that would be worthwhile, I recently saw a person who did that in the form of a podcast, and he made his book into a podcast, and I thought it was very well done, he read it himself, and it was nice, because I needed to read the book, and so I was able to listen to it while driving, and he read it very well, so I am thankful for showing me that as a possibility, and I think I'm going to be doing that as well, as long as I think there's some interest, so if that's something that interests you, if you would like God in Three Persons in audio book form, and you think me reading it would be something that would be worth my time, and worth the time of others, send me a note, let me know what you think.
04:11: Like I said, today's subject is going to be on the doctrine of the Trinity, because this is actually a question that came to me from a listener, and again I want to thank you Christy, you're a long time listener, you've listened to many of our programs, and I always appreciate your feedback, and I love getting your questions, so Christy asks this question, she said, could you share a Calvinist analogy of the Trinity, mostly how they all fall short, and then she asked me, do I have a good analogy for the Trinity, and so that's really going to be the subject of today, is analogies for the Trinity, why we think that all of them, in one sense or another, do fall short, and why that is.
05:03: So let's just begin by discussing very quickly, when we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, what is the basic doctrine? The basic doctrine is that we believe that God is one, Christians are monotheists, meaning we believe in one God, we don't believe in tritheism, which is the doctrine that there are three gods, we don't believe God breaks up into three parts, and we don't believe in modalism, which is that God is simply showing himself in three different modes, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but rather we believe that God is one in his essence, or one in his being, and so when we talk about God as one, we are talking about the being of God, God is one in his being, or one in his essence, and another word that we use sometimes is the word substance, and when I'm teaching on the Trinity, I say, that which God is in his substance is one, and you say, but God is spirit, so therefore God doesn't have substance, he doesn't have water, or fire, or some other substance that can be measured or weighed, and that's true, but when we talk about God in his nature, we talk about God in his being, we say God is one, and yet we also talk about God being three in a different category, and this is where the Trinity is very important because what is most important about the doctrine of the Trinity is that we understand category distinctions, because God is one in his essence, or his being, or his substance, but God is three in his person, or what we might call his subsistence, this is the way that some of the confessions refer to the persons, rather than saying person, they will use the phrase subsistence or peculiar relative properties is sometimes the way that it's described confessionally, and so when it's saying that, it's saying that there are three persons that share the one essence of God, there are three persons who are able to relate to one another, they are able to interact with one another, in fact we would say they're able to love one another, and that's an important part of the doctrine of the Trinity, is understanding that there is a love relationship within the Trinity, the Father loves the Son, the Son and the Father love the Spirit, the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and that relational aspect of the Trinity is maintained in the doctrine of the Trinity which says God is one in his essence, but he's three in his person and he has always been three in person, it's not as if God became Trinity when he created the world or he became Trinity when he sent Jesus to be born of a virgin, or when Jesus was born of a virgin, that is not what we're saying, we're not saying that God became a Trinity, we're saying God has always been Trinitarian, and so in eternity past, which is kind of a miscommunication of terms, because when we talk about eternity we talk about past and future, but in a sense eternity is outside of time, so eternity past is kind of an odd way of saying it, but what we mean is before God created time, before God created the world and the universe that we now live in, he existed outside of time, and he has always existed, there was never a time when God was not, and there was never a time when God was not Trinitarian so God has always been one in essence, God has always been three in person, and there is a distinction between being in person, or essence in person or substance in subsistence, and I do use this analogy a lot, so if you've heard me use it before I just remind you that repetition is the key to learning, and the key to learning is repetition so it's okay if you've heard this before, and this again did not come from me, but a lot of my early instruction on the doctrine of the Trinity, I was helped greatly by Dr.
09:54: James White, and his book, The Forgotten Trinity was very helpful, and his lectures and his debates were very helpful in establishing sort of an understanding of this particular part of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that is making the distinction between being in person, and we could say like a rock has being, but it doesn't have person, and so if somebody says well what's the being of the rock, well the being of the rock is what it's made of, it has its it is a rock by substance, but it has no personality you can't talk to a rock, you can't negotiate with a rock, you can't have a conversation with a rock, and even though I know years ago there was a thing called a pet rock, where people did that, and the guy who invented the pet rock made a ton of money on that idea, and it was quite silly as far as I'm concerned but the point is, a rock has no person and so the ratio is a one to zero ratio, one being, zero person and when we look at a human being, a human being has being and person, so it's a one to one ratio of being to person, God is one being, and three persons share that being, and therefore it is the ratio of one to three, one being and three persons, so that's the way we describe the doctrine of the Trinity, and again if you are interested in God in three persons that is described and there are scriptures to back up what I'm saying in there, because we talk about why we believe that God is one in essence and three in persons and part of the reason why we believe that is because the Bible describes God as one, but it also calls three persons God, it calls the Father, God it calls Jesus, God, in many places, and it calls the Holy Spirit, God, and yet there's a distinction between the Father and the Son, the Father and the Son are in relationship with one another, the Father and the Son are in relationship with the Spirit, Jesus is in relationship with the Spirit he talks about sending the Spirit, I go away and I send you the Comforter who will be with you, and so we have this doctrine of the Trinity that is not based on man's creative whims, it's certainly not based on simply the creativity of the framers of the Nicene Creed or anyone like that, it's based on where the Bible takes us and there's really no way around the doctrine of the Trinity because if we violate any of those principles that God is one in essence God is three in person, and then there's a third principle that I didn't mention but it's this that the three persons are all God and therefore are all co-equal, co-eternal, and at the same time are distinct, meaning they can be distinguished the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father or the Son and so we have to, and that leads to other issues, right, because if you there's something called patripassionism, and patripassionism is the doctrine that the Father died on the cross, the patri being the word for Father and passion referring to what happened on the cross and the idea of patripassionism is that the Father is the one who gave himself on the cross, but the Bible doesn't teach that, the Bible teaches that Jesus, the Son, was the one who went to the cross and that the Father was the one who sent the Son for God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
14:01: So when we address the doctrine of the Trinity we're looking at God as one in essence, three in person, these three persons are all God and therefore are all co-equal, co-eternal and distinct.
14:15: And then we begin to move into the question that Christi has proposed to us well, if that's the case, we believe in the Trinity that is what I've described is the classic Christian understanding of the Trinity.
14:31: Well, what is an analogy for the Trinity and why is it that in Reformed communities we usually say that there are no analogies? I think I'm describing the question the way that she intended is why do all the analogies break down and the reason why is God is, the Bible describes God as holy, in fact the Bible doesn't just describe God as holy, the Bible describes God as holy, holy, holy.
15:02: He is the only being in scripture who is described with the trihagion, which is the threefold holy.
15:14: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with his glory, say the seraphim in Isaiah chapter 6.
15:22: So we have this description of God as holy.
15:27: And so holy is referencing God's absolute distinction his absolute difference from his creation and when we think of two specific categories, there's the category of creature and the category of creator.
15:43: And God is the only one in the category of creator.
15:46: Now when we talk about God we're saying the Trinitarian God God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit that make up the one God that share the being of the one God these three persons are the only that fit into the category of creator.
16:01: Every other thing falls under the category of creature and so we are creatures, the animals are creatures, the angels are creatures, the earth itself is a creation and everything falls under the category of creation of creature other than God himself who is the creator.
16:24: So he is holy in the sense that he's absolutely unique.
16:28: There is none like unto him the Bible tells us.
16:34: So when we talk about God we talk about him as being unique, therefore there are no real ways to say and therefore God is like.
16:45: Now we can discuss the attributes of God and we can relate the attributes of God to certain qualities or characteristics that we might possess such as we talk about the love of God and the only way that we can talk about the love of God is by in some way comparing that to what we know is love and we call that analogical language where we are making an analogy between God's attributes and our attributes but even those analogical comparisons do break down.
17:26: We know that while God loves us and we love him there is a distinction to be made between the love of God and the love of man and certainly we can say the love of God is much more powerful, it's much more broad it's much greater than our love but at the end of the day we can talk about God's attributes and in such a way that we are making an analogy to something in our world but when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity we are referring at that point to God's essential being when we address God's essential being we are no longer talking about something that really has an analogy in our world there are some analogies that people have tried to make but what happens is in the making of those analogies there tend to end up a point in which we fall off into some form of false teaching.
18:42: There is a wonderful cartoon program, Lutheran Satire.
18:47: I want to plug Lutheran Satire.
18:49: I don't know the people who put it together I don't know the minister who does it but most of their videos are absolute gold and there is a portion of Lutheran Satire where they talk about the doctrine of the Trinity and it's two men and again it's cartoons, it's silly but they say can you give us an analogy for this Trinity you're telling us about and the cartoon is of St.
19:21: Patrick trying to explain it to the people in Ireland and he begins to describe the Trinity like a three leaf clover and he describes the Trinity like an egg and they're like no no Patrick that's not the Trinity.
19:41: I'll throw a clip in real quick and you'll see.
19:43: So try to keep it simple okay Patrick? Yeah real simple Patrick Sure there are three persons of the Trinity the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit yet there is only one God.
19:57: Don't get what you're saying here Patrick.
19:59: Not picking up what you're laying down here Patrick.
20:01: Could you use an analogy Patrick? Sure.
20:04: The Trinity is like water and how you can find water in three different forms liquid and ice and vapor.
20:15: That's mordalism Patrick! What? Mordalism, an ancient heresy confessed by teachers such as Noatus and Sibelius which espouses that God is not three distinct persons but that he merely reveals himself in three different forms.
20:28: This heresy was clearly condemned in Canon 1 at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD and those who confess it cannot rightly be considered a part of the Church Catholic.
20:36: Come on Patrick! Yeah get it together Patrick! You see the analogies for the Trinity break down whenever you start considering the fact that there are no real analogies in the world to the Trinity.
20:50: Now there's a lot of things that come in three such as the egg has a shell, a yolk, and the white of the egg and the sunlight has the heat and the light and the energy and you know there's a lot of things in the world that come in groups of three and I do think that there's a reason for that on one level I do think that a lot of the reasons why the fact that we see so many things in three even a lot of times we make arguments in groups of three.
21:23: We list out three things because I think there is something ingrained in us that that sort of is based on that sort of Trinitarian idea of God being three in his person in fact there is from a historical perspective a lot of Christian music especially ancient Christian music was not in the timing of 4-4 which is 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 that's the 4-4 is a time signature music but a lot of Christian music was in the time signature of 3-4 like a waltz 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 and the reason for that that's like Amazing Grace is in 3-4 time, Amazing Grace it's designed, it's set up in that 3-4 time signature again as somewhat because of considering this to be a tie to the divine nature that God is three in person and I'm not saying that that's right or wrong I'm just giving sort of a little history as to what we see so having said all that I want to just real quick make a few points about some analogies because here's what happens with the analogies the analogies ultimately break down because what we end up doing is we end up discarding some portion of the Trinity by making the analogy so for instance when we say God is like the egg, the egg has a shell a white and a yolk, the problem is those three things are three different parts of the egg and God is not parts, He does not have different parts, Jesus is not a different part of God than the Father, He is distinguished in His person but not parts and so that is where it begins to break down, we begin to talk about the parts and one of the ways historically this has been described is what's called modalism and you've probably heard of this it came up in the video just a few minutes ago when I showed the clip is the modalism is a doctrine that addresses the or is a false teaching rather that teaches that God changes His mode of being in relation to the situation man is in, so in the Old Testament He was the Father in the Gospels He's Jesus and now He's the Holy Spirit and these modes are changing and so He's the same God, He's simply changing His modes and so the idea would be like if I said I as a human being I'm a father, I'm a husband and I'm a son I'm my wife's husband, I'm my children's father I'm my father's son and somebody says well there you're a trinity because you're three different persons, no I'm not, I'm one person that is in different relationships with other people, that is not the trinity and that is not a good example of the trinity, so if someone says well the trinity is like God being the Father in the Old Testament, being the Son in the Gospels and being the Spirit during the age of the church, I would say no, that is an example of modalism, it's not what we're saying because in that particular position what we end up with is one God with different personalities and that's not the same as different persons just to be clear because you look at Jesus at His baptism when Jesus is being baptized it says the Father spoke from heaven and He said this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased and it says that Jesus was there present and the Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove, so we see all three persons present at the baptism of Jesus and all three persons are distinguished at the baptism of Jesus and it's interesting that later when Jesus gives us the formulaic language of Trinitarian, or excuse me, of baptism it's a Trinitarian formula, He says go into all the world and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit so we see this Trinitarian formula in baptism and we see the Trinity pictured in Jesus' baptism.
26:25: So getting back to Christie's question, the question was are there any analogies that don't break down? I don't think that there are I don't think that we can find an analogy that at some point doesn't begin to fall into the category of error at best and heresy at worse.
26:47: And again, modalism is a heresy it was understood as being a false view of Jesus.
26:54: So what do we do? If we don't have a direct analogy, well, my recommendation would be to learn what the historic teaching on the Trinity is and when you're describing it to someone, don't use an analogy don't say God is like an egg, or God is like three in one oil or God is like the Sun which has heat and light and energy any of those things would be missing the mark because the analogies break down but what you could do is, again, learn the historic way that the Church has described the doctrine of the Trinity there is one God, there are three persons who are called God.
27:45: These three persons are truly God and are therefore co-equal, co-eternal and distinct.
27:53: Now that would be something I would say learn that and do your best to keep that in your mind when you're attempting to discuss the Trinity or share the Trinity with others.
28:06: Now another thing that you can do, and this is, again, going back to the book is to familiarize yourself with some of the historic creeds and some of those creeds do a very good job of attempting to describe the Trinity in language that is not it's not always the easiest to understand but it is certainly a fit description of what the Trinity is and what we are saying when we discuss the doctrine of the Trinity.
28:51: So I'm looking here through the book and I want to be able to describe, let's see here okay, we have here on page 49 of the book what's called the Athanasian Creed.
29:09: Now this is a creed which was likely not written by Athanasius himself but rather was a codification of Athanasius teachings.
29:21: And so I want to read the Athanasian Creed to you have you hear what it's saying and show you that one of the best ways we can describe the Trinity is actually to describe the Trinity rather than trying to find a extra biblical or a worldly analogy which we're not going to find it's going to break down.
29:41: Let us look to the words of our forefathers that sought to describe this in the very best way that they could Now this is not a short confession or a short creed.
29:54: This is takes up a couple pages of the book so I'm only going to read a portion of it but my recommendation to you is to get a copy of the Athanasian Creed.
30:04: You can just type that in online and get yourself a copy or again if you do happen to get the book it will be in the book for you.
30:10: This is what it begins by saying.
30:15: Whosoever will be saved before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.
30:21: Now remember you have to make a quick comment.
30:23: The word Catholic here means universal.
30:25: This is not saying you have to be Roman Catholic but you do have to hold the one universally true faith and that is described in the Athanasian Creed.
30:39: Whosoever will be saved before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.
30:44: Which faith except everyone to keep whole and undefiled without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
30:51: And the Catholic faith is this.
30:54: That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity.
30:58: Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
31:02: For there is one person of the Father another of the Son and another of the Holy Ghost.
31:07: But the Godhead of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one.
31:11: The glory equal the majesty co-eternal.
31:16: Now it goes on as I said much longer than that but this is what I would encourage you.
31:21: If you're looking for an analogy I can say all analogies will in some way form or fashion break down.
31:29: So instead of an analogy I would encourage you to learn the simple explanation of the Trinity if you can call it simple.
31:36: The basic explanation that God is one in essence.
31:39: He is three in person.
31:41: Those persons are all God and therefore are all co-equal co-eternal and distinct.
31:46: And then if you want to go deeper I would recommend beginning with the creeds the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed both of which describe what our forefathers believed and what we continue to affirm as Christians about the doctrine of the Trinity.
32:04: Now before I end I want to address one last thing and this is regarding the issue of Calvinism because I said every week I wanted to add in some form of discussion about Calvinism and theology.
32:17: Well when it comes to Trinitarian theology what I have found and this may not be universally true this is completely anecdotal meaning this is just my experience.
32:30: What I have found is in general people who are Calvinistic in their theology, in their soteriology, their view of salvation tend to also be the ones who are concerned the most about being correct in their explanation of other doctrines specifically doctrines like the doctrine of the Trinity.
32:56: I have been in many churches that were not Calvinistic in nature and the best I can say is they were a little more loose and a little less clear in their description of other doctrines such as the doctrine of the Trinity.
33:15: I'll give an example of a man that I knew who was a member of a church that was a non-Calvinistic we would say Arminian Baptist church and one of the men on staff was a modalist.
33:29: He was clearly not a Trinitarian he was teaching a theology about Jesus that was clearly modalistic and when this man went to the pastor and said we have a guy on staff who is teaching something that is considered to be historically considered to be a heresy and the pastor said I'm not going to do anything about it because as far as he was concerned it wasn't that big of a deal and so where I see the benefit of being a Calvinist is it tends at least again I say this anecdotally somebody may want to argue and if you want to send me a message and say your experience has been different hey you know opinions vary on this but as I have noted as I have recognized when I look at churches that are Calvinistic in their theology they tend to be more concerned with being precise on other doctrines as well and very specifically the doctrine of the Trinity I mentioned earlier Dr.
34:31: James White was very influential on me well most people know James White from writing books like The Potter's Freedom and The God Who Justifies books that address the doctrines of salvation particularly the Calvinistic soteriological doctrine of justification or rather divine election and justification by faith alone those things but Dr.
34:52: White is also very concerned about the Trinity and so it's about precision now none of us have perfect theology none of us have a theology that can't be improved upon that can't be none of us are in a place where we don't have room to learn but what we do have to understand is that a lot of people don't think that it's important a lot of people aren't concerned about growing in their theology they're not concerned about growing in their faith and growing in their knowledge of the scripture and that's that that really is that's a sad reality and Ligonier Ministries puts out a state of theology report every couple years and where they do interviews with people and ask questions and it just seems like the curve of theological understanding just keeps getting more and more and more abysmal it just keeps going down and down and down and that's a sad reality because the average churchgoer is unfortunately not very concerned about the accuracy of their theology but we should be and that's why I say as a Calvinist one of the things that we should be concerned about is that we are seeking to be accurate that we're seeking to be biblical that we're seeking to have and somebody says well you're never going to know it all no we're not going to know it all and there are going to be things that we need to grow in need to improve in but we should be seeking for accuracy in what we believe conforming everything that we believe back to what the Bible says so again I want to thank you Christy for this question thank you listeners for being with me today I pray that this has been an encouragement to you thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist my name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist may God bless you.
36:45: Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist if you enjoyed the program please take a moment to subscribe and if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail dot com as you go about your day remember this Jesus Christ came to save sinners all who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior He is the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
37:18: May God be with you.