Trinity

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Deren, Chris Kiesler, David Gass.

And we have Andrew Hudson in the corner, here to recommend and be thankful for things later. But we've got a question here about the word, the trinity, and I'll read it as it was written. The Bible never uses the word trinity, but you would call anyone who denies it a heretic.

The Gospel as the Essential Starting Point

Is it really that important? Honestly, do people have to articulate an orthodox understanding of the hypostatic union or homoousius to meet your criteria for membership? Do we just need to be able to recite the apostle's creed, even if we don't fully understand it?

Michael. This is an interesting question, not, I think, a couple Sundays ago, hanging out with some brothers after church, and this topic came up, and trying to put a fine point on just how wrong do you have to be before you lose your salvation or are not saved, basically, not lose your, you know, you're not saved if you believe these wrong-headed ideas.

And we recall that Jesus put a child in the midst of his disciples and said, of such is the kingdom of heaven. And we think of the faith of a child, we think of what is, you know, desiring the milk, the nourishing milk of the word.

What does a child have to know in order to be saved? And of course, this is a question that puts into the main focus our own human experience in the question. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

What does it mean that I'm, why am I calling on his name? How am I calling and who is he? These things matter. I can't just have any kind of concept of Jesus in my head and say, well, the Jesus I believe in or the God I believe in, and this means that I'm a Christian, right?

It's not supremely subjective. It's not primarily existential. There is an objective historical reality that occurred. When we go to, for example, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and Paul is dealing with the gospel of Jesus Christ according to the scriptures, he has some objective things to say about that.

And in verse one, "'Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel "'which I have preached to you, "'which you also received and in which you stand.'". You think about the gospel that Paul preaches. We think of Paul as the theologian who sets forth the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

You're saved by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We get those ideas strongly from Paul, and that's correct, but that's because of who Jesus Christ is and who he was in history and what actually happened, right?

So when he says, "'I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, "'which you also received and in which you stand,' verse two, "'by which also you are saved, "'if you hold fast that word which I preached to you, "'unless you believed in vain.'".

Now, this is getting at the heart of that question, right? What do you have to believe in order to be saved? Okay, so this is a passage that gets right to that. Verse three, "'For I delivered to you first of all "'that which I also received, "'that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, "'and that he was buried, "'and that he rose again the third day "'according to the Scriptures.'".

Now, let's just stop right there. Two things here. One, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. This is what is explicit in the text. What is implicit, of course, is his birth and life, right? Because this is the man who was born and lived and he died according to the Scriptures.

What's implicit is his ascension to heaven and his reign today, which, of course, Paul gets to later on in the same chapter. So that's part of it. So he's talking about the historical realities of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Paul begins Romans talking about the historical realities of Jesus, the descendant of David, according to the flesh and so forth. So he's rooted in actual history, okay? But notice also the qualifier.

What are we believing? Not simply the historical data, not just the historical account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, but notice, according to the Scriptures, according to the Scriptures.

What God has said about Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, that's part of the gospel too. It's not simply the actions of Christ, not just the historical person of Christ and the historical actions of Christ, but the person and work of Christ as described by the Scriptures, the message of the Bible.

What is the meaning of his death? What is the meaning of his burial? What is the meaning of his resurrection? That this is the word that Paul preached to them, this is the good news which he preached to them, this is what we believe in and are saved by, and this is in accordance with things that he has said elsewhere.

In giving an example of Abraham being justified by faith, and it was accounted to him as unto righteousness, so also righteousness is accounted to us who do not work, but rather believe, and believe what?

The gospel. And he says the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus according to the Scriptures. Then he goes on to say, this was well-attested to, everyone, Cephas, the 12, all these different people saw, the apostles and James, and then I saw them too.

We all saw that he rose from the dead. So important that we believe in the resurrection, and he goes on to highlight the resurrection a great deal, because Jesus is alive today, he is risen today, and this matters for everything.

And so he puts forth this as what is necessary to believe. Now notice the potential here. The potential here is for a five-year-old, for example, I'm using myself as an example, and I came to faith in Christ at five years old, to believe Christ according to the Scriptures.

How much of the Scriptures did I know? Not a lot. I knew who Jesus was and who Jesus Christ was. What I knew about him was very little, but it was according to the Scriptures. Did I exhaust the Scriptures, am I understanding?

Not even close. But I believed according to the Scriptures, I believed the gospel, and I was saved by this gospel. Still believe it. What I know now is far more than what I used to know, and there are things that I used to think about that were in error, that got corrected along the way, but I believe, and I am still believing in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures, still believing in this gospel.

I did not believe in vain.

So I think it's the great starting point. So yeah, so you're using First Corinthians 15 as an example, as a, here's a good place to start. And by your own admission, you said that there's certain things that you did not know about Christ as a young lad, and didn't have a full-orbed knowledge of the Scriptures, as none of us at this table does yet.

And this questioner, he starts off with saying, well, you know, the words aren't, like the Trinity isn't used, and you call them heretic, and this, this, what's the bare minimum that you need to know?

And he's kind of jumping into that. So from your perspective, the bare minimum really is faith in Christ, faith in Christ alone, and his work, his death, burial, and resurrection. Something along those lines.

Is that the bare minimum? Could you say, okay, after this, he's like, yeah, you got this part, you're good, you're on first base. And I don't mean to be trite at all, but is that first base? And then we just, anything else beyond that is gravy?

What, if we were going to say, what's the minimum? I mean, what is it that somebody really needs to know? And if that's, and if 1 Corinthians 15 is the quintessential example, are there others that we should consider as well?

Regeneration and the Limits of Religious Knowledge

Yeah, so I think, given the example, somebody who comes to faith in Jesus Christ, we understand that this is by the grace of God. We understand that this is by, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, who was a highly, highly educated man, who knew the scriptures better than I do.

And Jesus tells him, you can't even enter the kingdom of God unless you're born again. Meaning, it's not based on knowledge. It's not, you can't knowledge your way into the kingdom. This isn't Gnosticism.

You can't educate yourself into the kingdom. Not your level and precision of knowledge. You must be born again. And so you have a situation where it is by the grace of God. This is not to say that people are born again and never know who Jesus is.

That people are born again and saved and going to heaven who have no idea about who Christ is or what he did or what it all means and they're saved unawares and they just end up in heaven. Like, wow, how'd I end up here?

I'm not saying that. These things come together, obviously. But a young person in a church where the Trinity is never discussed, the pastor couldn't even hope to begin to delineate about the humanity and deity of Christ.

And it was on the seventh verse of whosoever meaneth me or I've decided to follow Jesus and the young person went forward and, you know, I do believe in Jesus and I am his and I do believe in him. I trust him.

He's my savior. Okay. Yeah. I'm not saying, well, they were never educated on the Trinity. They were never educated on the incarnation. They don't know the apostles' creed and they're not likely to find out much about that as long as their religious education is confined to that church.

Okay. I'm not saying that they're lost. I don't think the Bible would say that they're lost. I would say that what we find time and time again is in very, what we would consider to be very dark and awful moments in church history that Christ is still a wonderful shepherd, still calling out sheep to follow him, still saving and people knew hardly anything as we would think of it today.

They just knew so little and yet they have faith in the Christ of the scriptures as much as they knew and they're saved. This is not to say the same thing. The concern I think is genuine. The doctrine of the Trinity is vitally important.

The doctrine of the incarnation is vitally important. It's hard to understate. It's hard to overstate how important these things are. I think Bavink is right when he says that every doctrinal error in existence comes from some misapprehension of the Trinity.

I think the primary doctrine on which everything hangs in all of existence is the incarnation. I think it is the central fact of the universe. So I don't think that these things are small. I think they're of vital importance and it's something to learn, something to grow.

Ignorance Versus Deliberate Denial of Trinitarian Doctrine

We talked about this a little bit off mic. There's a huge difference between somebody who doesn't really understand the Trinity, and that goes back to this questioner. He doesn't really understand the Trinity, doesn't really understand homoousius, but someone who does understand it and denies it, someone who denies the Trinity can articulate it.

Someone who says, no, I understand what you're saying, it's that same substance, no, different substance. Or there was a time when he was not. Somebody who's articulating a denial of it. Heretics tend to be quite educated.

Heretics are not ignorant. So there's a huge difference between I don't have a full understanding of this and this is, and I'm trying to, you know, the whole three-leaf clover thing, there's a whole, come on, Patrick, a series of videos that are hilarious every time you try to describe the Trinity in any kind of scientific or...

All analogies fail. They all fail, they absolutely do. All analogies fail because you're dealing with eternity itself. So I want to make sure that, you know, as far as the questioner goes, yeah, I mean, if you don't fully understand it, that's okay.

That's not, you know, from reading 1 Corinthians 15 or Romans 10 or something like that, I think you're okay. We need some more education. But when you started getting into flat-out denials, we got an issue.

Even in the question, there's kind of a range of what's being talked about. So the second part there, so Trinity's not there, but you would call someone who denies it a heretic. But then it talks about membership.

A pastor's role is different than just a member. I mean, they do a lot of the same things, but the pastor is hopefully studying the scripture to present it to the sheep and to shepherd the sheep. And so he's aware of more of those things that maybe the member is not aware of.

And hopefully the pastor is teaching them these things as they come along. And like you said, it specifically says someone who denies the Trinity, there's a difference between not knowing something and then blatantly refuting it or denying it.

You have to have that knowledge there. But someone who doesn't know can be instructed. Think of Apollos, who is better instructed. Paul on the road, he met some disciples and they had not been baptized in Christ.

He said, our baptism was of John. He said, well, so he had to instruct them even more. But we see then that when they were given that information, they didn't deny it. They didn't reject it because the Holy Spirit was working in their lives.

The sheep were being fed and they were taking the feed. A wolf doesn't take sheep's feed. He rejects it and he goes after sheep. Right. I remember many moons ago, I think it was probably about, I don't know, 14, 15 years ago, I was sitting with some pastors in Tennessee, rural county, Tennessee.

And we're talking a little bit about the distinction between the threshold of what we were thinking about in terms of coming to faith in Christ versus becoming a church member. Those are two different thresholds.

Now, to be careful with that, we're not saying that if you're a genuine Christian, we're not going to allow you to be a member of our church until you get more holy. Maybe that's part of it, but when we're talking about membership, we're saying something about you're agreeing to a lot of things here.

Do you understand that? Do you understand what that is? We're not saying that you're not a brother. And we're not going to love you. And if everything is okay, we're not going to deny you communion either.

Come sit with us. I don't think that they denied communion to Paul when he showed up because he wasn't a native Corinthian or something. But when we think about church membership, we're calling you to uphold the testimony of the church.

You're saying, I'm here to serve and to contribute, and I'm in agreement with what this church believes. And so they're all manner of dear brothers and sisters whom we could have communion with on a Sunday, but we're not going to let them be church members.

Why? Because they see baptism different than us. And baptism is not nearly as important, nowhere near as important as the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Okay, but you still don't get to be a member here if you think that baptizing babies is the way to go.

Sorry. Like, we want you to worship in like faith and practice where your conscience is clean and free, and that just wouldn't work here. Okay, so we love you. And so because we love you, we're going to recommend, you know, Christ the King Presbyterian down in Norman.

You know, be blessed.

Yeah, you can fellowship with people that you can call them, call them brothers. I have a very good friend of mine that I love. He's a Presbyterian minister in Houston. And is he a brother in Christ? 100%.

Can I fellowship with him? Yes. Do I look forward to visiting him at his church on a Sunday? Yes, definitely. And could I join his church? He probably wouldn't let me. Right. And he would laugh in my face because he's an awesome guy.

Yeah. He would do that.

Well, I mean, and that's the way it should be. We should love each other. And our statement of faith for joining our church is not a very high bar at all. It does have the doctrine of the Trinity. It does have the doctrine of the incarnation.

Okay. It has some basic statements of what we believe about the nature of the scriptures and so forth. It's not a high bar. Even then, somebody joining the church, they're going to read through that and they're going to say, that sounds pretty good.

I think that's about right. But are they going to be able to well articulate the doctrine of the Trinity for me? They may have trouble putting it all together in just the right way. Would they be able to explain the doctrine of the incarnation well to me?

They may make some mistakes and some category errors as they do their best to say it. But they're not in disagreement with that. And they would like to know more probably. And they would like to be guided in the scriptures to know more.

This is again, what we're saying, a far different thing than somebody who has taken up the banner of anti-Trinitarian, taken up the banner of anti-incarnation. That's a far different thing. I think we were looking at, before we got on the mics, look up the Greek word for heretic.

Heresy as Factious Opposition to the Faith

And the Greek word for heretic is in Titus. We find it in Titus chapter three, verse 10. Reject a factious man or a schismatic man after one or two warnings. And that's where we get the Greek word heretikos or heretic.

And so the idea is that this is somebody who has chosen a faction and they're flying that flag. So it's something where they're putting themselves in particular opposition to your church's most precious beliefs.

Now, a factious man, that's a broader category than the technical term that we use of heretic. We usually reserve the term heretic for those areas of doctrine that are of first importance, which is doctrine of the Trinity, doctrine of God, doctrine of the incarnation, which includes the doctrine of salvation.

These are first order matters. And somebody who is factious against those gets the actual dedicated term of heretic. Now, you could also be factious about other things. You could be factious about, well, you're not serving only wine in one cup, shared amongst all 120 of you every Sunday morning.

That's how we did it in the Anglican church. I kind of recommend it. And so, but I mean, it's like, yeah, but if you're like, you're not a real church unless you do this and you're an insult to the angels and Jesus hates you unless you do it like this, you're a factious man.

I don't know if I would even, you know, give you the honorific of heretic. You're just, you're just ornery.

Even when Paul talks about the weaker brother, he says, receive him, not to argue. Yeah, that's good. That's good. But not to argue over those things.

That's a good point. So what do you have to know? So one of the things that is good to recognize is that we are justified by faith, not by our understanding of justification by faith. Right, I'm justified by faith.

I'm not justified by my understanding of the doctrine of the justification of faith. Okay, and I got that from Doug Wilson originally with me and all where he got it from, but it's a sage observation.

So somebody may have been discipled with faith with all manner of alternate terms and the way that they express themselves may grate against somebody who believes in the doctrines of grace. But at the end of the day, they're probably not really in opposition to the idea of Jesus is my savior.

And if it was up to me, I wouldn't go to heaven. You know, they believe that even if, you know, if somebody gets put on edge and gets alarmed by things and starts getting into debate mode and buzzwords start getting used, who knows where they end up, but what do they actually believe?

And so sometimes my children ask me about, you know, this false church or that denomination or so on, and like, who's, you know, who's okay, right? You know, I had a friend who visited a Greek Orthodox church or I had a friend talking about Roman Catholics or this person I see on YouTube a lot or Instagram or whatever, they're a Roman Catholic or their vice president is Roman Catholic.

What do they actually believe and what's, you know, he's more American Catholic than Roman Catholic. But the, I tell them, look, it's the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the incarnation and the five souls.

You find somebody who believes that.

And you have unity with them. I mean, the, one of the first sermons that Jesus preached, one of his early sermons, you know, out of Mark 1 is, repent, believe the gospel. Mm-hmm. You know, that's, it's pretty simple.

The Content of Gospel Proclamation and Discipleship

As we were talking, I was listening to you, it's like there is a certain amount of knowledge that a person, you know, needs to have, and then you kind of boil down to what you think they are. As I was kind of reading around and you had quoted this at Romans 10 and 13, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How then, as he continues, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed and how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. So there are people that, there's a reason why we disciple. There's a reason why you train your children.

There's a reason why you go to church and you have a very word-centered sermon and Bible studies and in your own personal time, you're spending time in the Word to learn about God the Father, to learn about the Son, to learn about the Holy Spirit and you start to get a sense of what the Trinity is even if you can't fully define it.

But these people who come and they share the gospel with you, this good news, they're sharing content. They're not just giving you a picture of Jesus, tell you to color it in and then do you want to have him into your heart?

Well, who's Jesus? There has to be some content to it. And I think that when we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of God, the incarnation, and then saved by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, how do we know that?

Because the scriptures tell us so and this is all to the glory of God. Yeah, that's a pretty good, I think it's a pretty good place to start. And I think this chapter in Romans supports that. Those are the things that an evangelist, someone who shares the gospel with you, someone who's discipling you,.

That's the kind of stuff that they should share. Absolutely. We've been working with kids for the past couple of years, Heather and I, teaching through scripture. Sometimes it's bull in teeth just to get to read passages with certain ages.

But we have Killian's group now that we're going back and forth with with the biases month to month. And we're going through Acts and watching Paul get pummeled through Acts going from different city to different city, dealing with different problems the whole time.

But like trying to return to who Paul worships, who Paul follows, and reminding them who Jesus is, reminding him of the simple gospel, his work, and his necessity for all men has been extremely helpful in sorting some of these questions out in my mind.

Like, what do kids need? Kids need the real simple stuff, and they need Christ, Christ, Christ, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. What's Paul focusing on? Jesus. What are the people who are his enemies focusing on?

Not Jesus. They're focusing on, like, so it brings you down to real simple terms and asking super simple questions of the text. And I think some of the, we do love to, in our circles and amongst each other, we like to talk about more of the abstract things or some of the minutiae that are, like we've already said, very important.

But there are things that are primary to those things that flow from the first thing, and that being Christ. I actually appreciate having to go through this question and discuss it because this is somebody questioning us who obviously knows that sometimes we'll try to go to the weeds because that's where we end up going.

But this is where we need to hammer down at.

We've been going through Galatians in our Sunday school class. And from that, talking about what is the bare minimum and being very careful not to add requirements that Christ does not require. In Galatians, it's the issue of circumcision.

I know many people wanna talk about baptism. Baptism saves you. Or having the right translation of the Bible, even though it says, you think you find salvation in the scripture, but speak of me. So not adding things that Christ does not require.

Why the Trinity and Incarnation Matter for Salvation

It's come to me. I think it's important to clarify why the doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation and the five souls, why would those be so important? Well, it's a way of shorthand. Good theology is faithful shorthand to what the Bible says at large.

And the doctrine of the Trinity, why is that important to salvation? It wasn't the Father or the Spirit who died on the cross. It was the person of the Son in full divinity and full humanity who was on the cross.

So it wasn't the person of the Father or the Spirit who was born of Mary with righteous life, died upon the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead and who has ascended to reign as the man of all men and the man for all men as King and Savior.

That's not the Father. That's not the Spirit. That's the Son. The Father is the one who certainly sent the Son and all the Son does is in view of the Father to glorify Him and to please Him. And so, but then what are we told about the Spirit?

The Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. That the Father sends the Spirit as a promise and the Son is said to send the Spirit as the seal and the sign of His accomplished work. And so the Holy Spirit who indwells us, He's not the Father and He is not the Son, but He is God and because in Him, because He is perfectly holy and we have fellowship with God Himself because the Holy Spirit indwells the new covenant temple who are the saints of God.

And so in talking about salvation, talking about the gospel, we have to talk about the Trinity. And that's why it's so vital and essential. And the same with incarnation. That Christ sacrificed upon the cross as it is described, His person and work.

His person is the second person of the Godhead. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. It is the person of God the Son who took on human flesh. His nature's fully divine and fully human, but one person, the person of the Son who is Jesus.

And so this is who He is and He dies for us and what has not been assumed cannot be redeemed. Meaning, what part of humanity did Jesus not take on? Our sinful nature? But that's not part of humanity. Sin is aberrant.

He bore our sins on the tree, but He fully assumed everything that makes up a real human, all of it. So that every Truly human. Yeah, so that we are fully, completely redeemed. And He rose from the dead fully human and He is still fully human at the right hand of God.

Our high priest, as Hebrew says. And so Hebrews walks through the gospel by maxing out our understanding of Christ is divine and Christ is human to the nth degree, both sides. And this is why He is the perfect and superior to everything else and He is the perfect Savior.

And so the incarnation is essential for the doctrine of salvation, for the gospel. So incarnation and Trinity and the five souls, why? Because the nature of salvation is not based on the merits of men, not by works, not by the flesh, but by the will of God, by the grace of God, by grace alone, through faith alone, not of works, lest any man should boast, and Christ alone, only Savior.

He's the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Him. How do we know these things? Yeah, by faith alone. We know these things by faith alone. We learn them in the scriptures alone.

We don't get this from man. Holy men moved by the Holy Spirit, we have, but these are the words of God to tell us what salvation is. We don't get it from the DNA of creatures. We don't get it out of the biology of flowers.

We don't get it out of the sky. We don't get it by the hand of angels. We get it from the scriptures. Of course, the angels spoke in the scriptures and so forth, but we get the gospel from where? The scriptures.

And this is all to the glory of God alone. This is not about maxing man, you and I, that we would be glorious. Yes, there's a glory in salvation, but it's to the glory of God alone. The, anything from sanctification to human flourishing is penultimate.

Ultimate, it's the glory of God. Everything is around him, to his glory. And these are the, not only the necessaries to talk about the gospel properly, about what the gospel is and how we get saved and what salvation's all about, they are not only the necessaries, they are the safeguards.

So we find somebody operating outside of those, we call them back in. And if they say, no, I'm in absolute opposition to, I know, I deny the Trinity. I deny the incarnation. Those who believe in salvation by faith alone are anathema.

Right? That's the Council of Trent, Roman Catholicism 101. Well, guess what? That's when we pull out that word heretic. You know, it's like, I don't know, you're a heretic. And not because you disagree with me personally.

You guys should have seen the gesture that Michael made. It was like a soccer ref giving a yellow card. It was a red card. It was a red card. Boom, you're done.

May have been a black, they have black cards. It was a black card. It was something. So the, so the, why is it heresy? Because they have chosen a faction, not, it's not because you disagree with me, Mr. Fundamentalist Baptist.

You can find all kinds of things disagree with me about you're not a heretic. It's because you disagreed with Jesus. You disagreed with the Bible, disagreed with God. In the central, plain teachings of the Bible.

That's why you're a heretic. Don't do that.

Distinguishing Gospel Essentials from Membership Standards

All right, so we have the simple gospel message. And we have, that is, that's different maybe from church membership. That's, we're not talking about advanced theology regarding articulation of the Trinity.

And that's okay. So I think we've answered this questioner well. And I think we've differentiated what is, what are the essentials? And where you can go in the scriptures to find those yourself. And we'll fully acknowledge that there is more to learn.

And if you have been redeemed, and you have been changed from the inside out, you're going to want to learn more. And Chris, you said it well, that that's a person whose heart wants to learn more, and they're teachable.

Amen. Well, I think we can wrap that up and go on to what we recommend, Michael. Recommend a tract from Paul Washer, something my dad showed me this last Tuesday night. It's called The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's about 10 or 12 pages long, but in the pocket size, you pull it out, it's kind of a tract plus. A Concise Gospel Booklet for Evangelism Moments is the title. And so I flipped through there. Really good stuff.

Paul has honed this for a long time to talk about what are the essential key points of the gospel and how to call sinners to repentance, to show them who they are in the light of God's word and to call them to faith and repentance in Christ alone.

So it's a little tract. It's called The Gospel of Jesus Christ by Paul Washer, and you can find it in more than one place. I don't think they're very expensive. If you find my dad, he may just give you some for free.

Recommended Christology Resources

So another recommendation on the other end of the scale in terms of complexity is God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ by Stephen Wellham. It's in a series of books called The Foundations of Evangelical Theology.

So God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ. So Stephen Wellham has done a lot of thinking on the Doctrine of Christ. This is not his first book on the matter. This is well-seasoned, well-developed, treading into areas that were new for me, discussions that take you through not only the ecumenical creeds, but beyond and into the modern-day discussions, and some very vital things.

And what was important for me was, as a pastor, to be able to locate where the issues of Christology today are at, and then to connect those to the real pastoral concerns of dealing with folks in terms of counseling or in terms of discipleship and so on, why this matters today.

I don't think the Doctrine of Christ is exhaustible. So I was happy to read this, and Wellham more than once says, and we're just gonna stop right there. And this is as far as we're going to go, and we're gonna move on to this next thing because it's inexhaustibly rich.