Systematic Theology 1 | Lecture 5

Good morning. Good to see you. We have a lot to cover today, but it is on the Trinity, which is very exciting. I'm just looking at you have the midterm next week. I need to redo, probably try to change it up a little bit from course to course, but let's see. I have at least last year's, so may change is 20 Knowledge Questions, like who succeeded Francis Turretin as professor of theology in Geneva? So you should know that. Uh, how many Wills does God have? Foreign. So questions like that, which can be answered in a a word or a person. And then some short answer. I don't think this is actually one of them on here, but explain what the Bible, or explain what we mean by inerrancy and how you defend it from scripture. And just, you would just give a few bullet points. I'm not grading on your writing, I grade on your writing on your papers. Make that clear. But on a test, I'm trying to see that you know things. You need to write so I can understand what you're saying, or Alberto, whoever is helping to grade the papers. But I'm fine with bullet points on these short answers. So last time, I had a number of short answers and you picked three or four of them. So I have a little bit of grace there. If you, okay, there's two things you're not as sure on and there's some other ones that you're more comfortable with. So this will be the midterm. It will be probably 15 to 20 to 25 Knowledge Questions that are just a a name, a short phrase of explanation, and then some short answer. Not long essays, not filling up blue books, but a few bullet points on some key terms. Would be things that we've talked about in class. So any the reading that you've done will will reinforce that, but I'm not going to pull something from Turretin that I haven't talked about so far in class.

I think I mentioned to you that I will not be here next week, but we will have somebody to proctor the exam. I know there's one or two people who can't be here, so talk to me or talk to Alberto if you can't be here and we'll arrange for you to take it. But hopefully you can be and you'll take it. It usually takes some people a half hour, some people over an hour. And when you're done, you're done for the day. Any questions about the midterm next week? Yes, good question. It will be an old-fashioned paper handout. Are you writing there? Uh, no. Let's see. You can, no notes, obviously, no books, except, uh, uh, you can use your Bible. You can use your Bible. So if it says, how would you defend the doctrine of inerrancy from scripture? You need to know your way around the Bible. Don't bring in a massive study Bible that's telling you all the answers or just going to your concordance, but just a regular old Bible. So you know your way around the Bible. But not asking you to cram five verses for a whole number of doctrines that we've gone over. So I don't think there's a lot that you're going to need to be thumbing through your Bible. But on a couple of these short answer questions, yeah, you, I may ask for how you would support this from the Bible. So you can use your Bible. That's what you can use. Not the confessions, because there's too many answers in there, and not Turretin or your other notes. Any other questions?

All right, let's pray. Father, give us grace to think, to learn, to worship as we study who you are. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We need to finish up with these communicable attributes. I apologize for moving through these quickly. We are behind. Really would like to get through all the material on the Trinity today, though that's probably not going to be possible. We left off talking about God's communicable attributes, attributes of intellect, attributes of will, so-called because they are moral attributes as an expression of God's revealed will. Holiness, goodness, love. Talked about the love of beneficence, the love of benevolence, the love of complacency. And then grace. Grace, we can define as undeserved favor. Ephesians 1:6 and 7, Ephesians 2:7-9, Titus 2, Titus 3. You know many of the passages where God's grace is extolled, his undeserved favor to sinners. Similarly, but perhaps a little different, then is his mercy. If grace is undeserved favor for sinners, yes, the two terms might be used relatively interchangeably, but if there is a distinction to be made in Systematic Theology, it's that mercy is in particular coming to the aid of the weak. Grace, undeserved favor for sinners. Mercy, coming to the aid of the weak, helping the weary, coming to the mournful, to the miserable, helping those who are hurting and struggling is God's mercy. God's grace. God's mercy. God is long-suffering. That's how our English Bibles often translates it. Could be translated compassionate. So you put that with what we saw last week, God's impassibility, that in a technical sense, God does not suffer. He does not suffer as human beings experience suffering. And yet, we have this word in our Bibles, and it's in the confession as well, that God's character is long-suffering, meaning he is patient. That's what we mean. The riches of God's goodness, forbearance, and patience. Romans 2:4. It is his character revealed on Sinai, Exodus 34:6, that he's a God who is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. That that's what we mean by long-suffering, not that he is constantly hurting, not that sort of suffering, but he endures with patience his people, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, even Romans 9:22, long-suffering. And then finally, under this category of these moral attributes or attributes of will, we can speak of his righteousness. Righteousness. Righteousness directed, or we might say with reference, it's probably a better way to put it, with reference to himself. So this is his own moral rectitude, his own uprightness. And then his righteousness as it is directed towards others, that is giving to each one their due. And here, under righteousness, theologians often make the distinction between his remunerative justice and his retributive justice. Righteousness and justice are often translating the same words, Sadiq in Hebrew, or the dikayo stem in Greek. His righteousness, his justice. His remunerative justice, think about remuneration is reward, retribution is punishment. So God is a just God, and he is righteous and just with respect to himself and his moral of rightness, and to others, that is, he gives to us, and even beyond his righteousness, giving to us what we do not deserve. But technically, as we think about God's righteousness, the reason he can exercise remunerative justice toward us, you might say, well, none of us are deserving of a reward. And that's true. That this is really a topic for ST2, but Turretin and the other Protestant Scholastics are very careful to say, we don't believe in merit in the Catholic sense of some sort of quid pro quo or that God actually owes something. But if you were to think of merit more colloquially as God giving something to his people in response, not that God owes it to us, so generally speaking, we don't want to speak of merit, but of course, Turretin will give you several different ways of speaking of it. So if we are just thinking of his remunerative justice, that by virtue of the fact of belonging to Christ, therefore God rewards us, then that is true. And in fact, scripture speaks of a judgment according to works, that is not to be justified, but it's some sort of judgment. There's also a debate on whether our rewards in heaven are variable rewards or if eternal life itself is the reward. That's not a topic for this class. But God's remunerative justice is rewarding us. And the confession helpfully says that God not only looks upon us in terms of justification according to Christ, we get that, but he also looks at us in our progressive sanctification according to Christ. So that God finds favor in our works as Christians because he also looks upon our works graciously on account of the work of Christ. So it's not just that Christ is operative in our justification, but also in our sanctification, which is why God can be righteous to provide reward for those who serve him. The cross is how God can be both just and the justifier of the ungodly. That's the argument in Romans 3 and elsewhere. God's mercy is never established by the removal of justice. His grace and mercy are evident through the divine satisfaction of justice. Psalm 89:14, righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. So these are God's moral attributes or his attribute of will. And then quickly, as we talked about intellect, will empower. God's attributes of will can speak of two, of course, we could do others, but his omnipotence and his sovereignty. God has power. It's a communicable attribute, meaning we too can have power, but we need to be clear how God's power is different than our power. God's power is there. There is no intermediary distinction between God's will and God's power. That is to say, we have power, but our wills and our intellects, so our intellect wants to do something, our will chooses to do something, our power then carries it out. But our power as human beings is not always capable of carrying out or accomplishing what we devise intellectually or what we decide according to our wills. God's power is different. The production of our activity starts in the will, but they take effort, whereas God does whatever he pleases. He accomplishes whatever he wills. This is the highest conceivable idea of power. We cannot simply will a building into existence or a beautiful painting or new life, but God creates ex nihilo. That his willing is the very exercise of his power. There is no possibility that what God decrees and what God wills, what he chooses to do, will not come to pass. Such is his power. Jeremiah 32:7, there is nothing too hard for God. Matthew 19:26, with God all things are possible. Psalm 115:3, our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. Daniel 4:35, all the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing. None can stay his hand. Now, we should remember at this point that God's power cannot be divorced from all of his other attributes. In fact, none of his attributes can be divorced from all the other attributes. And so, at times, in our modern, postmodern context, people may be uncomfortable conceiving of God with this absolute power, but it is never an arbitrary power. It is never a capricious power. It is always a power that is tied to all of his other attributes, his righteousness, his goodness, his Holiness, his love, his Mercy, his grace. And then related to his omnipotence is his sovereignty. We will have much more occasion later in the class, in a next week or the following two weeks, to talk about God's decrees. And there we will come again to his sovereignty as it relates to the elect and to the reprobate. So here, just very quickly, we're talking about the will of God as the ultimate cause of all things. There is this line from Augustine, the will of God is the necessity of all things. That's what we mean by his sovereignty. We will come back in a week or two to talk about this word necessity. Not surprisingly, Turretin has some distinctions for us. I think he says there are six different types of necessity, and God's will is the necessity of all things in some of those senses, but not in others. But here, the general concept is the will of God is the necessity of all things. The way things are are operative because God has willed them to be. God's will cannot be thwarted. Ephesians 1:11, he works all things after the counsel of his own will. Psalm 147:4, he determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Second Chronicles 20, verse 6, O Lord God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you. So what God wills will come to pass. That's what we mean by his sovereignty. What he decrees is absolute and will come to pass. He superintends, oversees all things. Now, there are a lot of distinctions we need to make there, the difference between proximate and ultimate causes. God works through secondary means. How God can be the necessity of all things and yet not be the author or the actor of evil. We will come back to these important distinctions. But under his power, we speak of his omnipotence and his sovereignty.

To close off this section on God's attributes, just turn for a very brief reflection from Isaiah chapter 40. I don't know if this is accurate or not. I imagine that it's not, but I wish that it were. If you've seen the movie Chariots of Fire, if you haven't, shame on you. The Chariots of Fire and Eric Liddell won't run on Sunday. And the scene where Harold Abrahams is running the 100-meter race on Sunday, and then you have Eric Liddell who is preaching, reading God's word at a very austere-looking Presbyterian service, looking down on everyone wearing their their black and their hats, but he's reading from Isaiah chapter 40. And it's the juxtaposition of what he refused to do when the king and all those in authority wanted him to run, and yet he refused to run. And he reads from this passage which speaks so famously, verse 15, "Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales." He takes up the coastlands like fine dust. And he skips over certain passages that speak of Lebanon here, but he reads, "Do you not know? Have you not heard?" Of course, he goes on to the famous ending of Isaiah chapter 40, "They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not be." It just seems too good to be true that he just picked that. And speaking of his running, "And the kings of the earth are nothing." But it, it does fit very well the theme and what is going on at that point in the story, that God is so much bigger and greater and more important than all these people that would want him to violate his conscience. And at the same time, this God who is great and grand and glorious will also give strength to the weary. Isaiah chapter 40 is one of these great texts that shows together God's Transcendence and God's immanence. Heard these terms before? And it is immanence with an A, is Transcendence, meaning God's otherness, God transcending, being beyond us. And in his immanence, meaning God being close, being near at hand. At the heart of many theological errors is a failure to pay proper attention to either God's Transcendence or his immanence. There was a book I had to read in in seminary years ago on modern theology, sort of 20th-century theology, and in particular, a lot of liberal theology. And one of the central themes in the book, as I remember it, is that so much of liberal theology was wild mood swings back and forth between God's Transcendence and God's immanence. You have Schleiermacher, religion is a feeling of absolute dependence. It's sort of all immanence. And that liberalism of the late 19th, early 20th century. And then Barth in neo-orthodoxy is is swinging over to Transcendence. No, we have a God who is beyond us, a God who is other. And we welcome that correction. Yet Barth made other things by RTS lights, we would consider to be some mistakes. But 20th-century theology was in large part swinging back and forth between God's Transcendence and his immanence. And just pastorally, some of our personalities will be drawn to one or the other. You will find yourself, the the men here who will be preaching texts that give boom, God, big God theology. Yeah, you should be scared of God. You know, you love it. You're into it. It's Transcendence. Five-point, give me seven, eight, ten points. You got more points of Calvinism. I love them. Bring them on. You want this. You love this Transcendence. And others of you will be drawn to the the nearness, the closeness. And because either of your personality or your empathy with others, you will sense, no, what God, what God's people need every Sunday as they come in here and they're hurting, and they need to know that God loves them, and he's with them, and he cares for them. Well, of course, scripture is filled with both of those images of God. And we need to pay attention to the text to preach both the meaning and the mood of the text, lest we just gravitate to what we are most interested in. Many religions veer off in one direction or another, either with an absolute, impersonal, unknowable God, or, I think more common in our day, a weak, sentimental, reactive, localized deity who really seems much more like us than some other God. So Isaiah chapter 40, we won't read it, but just look at verse 12, for example. "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth, weighed the mountains and the hills in a balance?" This is a reference, we might say, to God's absolute immensity. And in verse 13, "Who has measured the spirit, or what man shows him his course?" This is God's absolute intelligence. Verse 14, "Whom did he consult? Who made him understand? Who taught him anything?" This is God's absolute independence, you may say, his aseity. And then the verses 15 through 17, "All the nations are nothing before him. They are counted by him as less than nothing, as emptiness." So this is God's power over the nations. Verses 18 through 20, God's power over idols. Verses 21 through 24, God's power over the peoples of the earth. Look at verse 22, "He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain." And who brings princes to nothing. And this is the famous, this is what Eric Liddell reads in the movie and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. So he has power over the peoples of the earth. Verses 25 through 26, he has power over creation. He brings out the starry host by number, he calls them by name. So heaping up verse after verse, you might say, is an exaltation of God's Transcendence, his immensity, his power over people and nations and all things. "To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?" says the Holy One. That's one of God's favorite designations in the book of Isaiah. 35 times in Isaiah, God is called the Holy One, or the Holy One of Israel. It, it's, it's not hard to connect the dots that Isaiah's experience in chapter six, seeing the Lord high and lifted up, holy, holy, holy, and the train of his robe filling the temple, that that impressed upon Isaiah the character of God, such that one of the most common, maybe the most common designation for God in the book of Isaiah is as a holy one, that there is none like him. And I don't say but as if the two things were opposite, but and because they go together, this massive, transcendent God. Look at verse 28, "He comes near to his people." "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding isn't searchable. He gives power to the faint. To him who has no might, he increases strength." Verse 31, "They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength." Remember verses 12 through 26, in all that Isaiah said about God, all that God said about himself, absolute immensity, absolute intelligence, absolute independence, this God who's sovereign over the nations, sovereign over idols, sovereign over his people, sovereign over all creation. Now, this God is said to give strength to the weary. This is what our people need. They need to know not just, you have a God who's in the same predicament you're in, and he loves you so much, and he hurts so much. Don't give to people an immanent God by shrinking God. Give them the good news that this massive, transcendent God, this God is coming near to them. It's the Transcendence of God that makes the immanence of God such amazing good news. That this God who looks upon the earth and sees the kings and the princes as nothing, sees the people as grasshoppers, yet this God hears your prayers, this God comes to you and wants to comfort you and will give you strength. And is depicted with a hand to lift them up, or earlier in Isaiah 40, says he carries the young lambs close to his heart. This strong God is yet tender and gentle to carry his people like a shepherd would carry a young, little, struggling young lamb. As one commentator put it, the wrong inference from God's sovereignty is that he is too great to care. The right inference is that he is too good to forget and too great to fail. So not that he is too great to care, but he's too good to forget and he's too great to fail. We see God's incommunicable and communicable, or his Transcendence and his immanence, coming together in Isaiah chapter 40, which is why this has always been one of my favorite chapters. So when you preach from Isaiah 40, just give me my personal opinion, you would do better to talk about this than you would to do a 20-minute excursive on eagles. I know it says he renews, but I've heard sermons before like the pastor just, he went to a wildlife seminar, and this whole passage is about the flight of eagles in Israel and the different kinds of eagles that existed in the ancient world and how many flaps of an eagle just, you know, spend a little bit of time on the eagle, okay? A lot of time on God. It's just, just an analogy. Just focus on the main thing.

So in studying the doctrine of God, we began a couple weeks ago by asking two foundational questions: What is God like? And who is God? That first question, what is God like, led us into that exploration of his attributes. The second question leads us to an exploration of the persons of God, or God as Trinity. Who is God? Is Trinity would be the short way to answer that question. Augustine, in his work on the Trinity, writes, "In no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable." So when you come to the doctrine of Trinity, it is really scaling the mountain heights, and there's a high risk and high reward. You're going to see some beautiful things if you can stretch your mind, and there's also many precipices. Augustine's, Sinclair Ferguson comments, I love this insight, I've often reflected on the rather obvious thought that when his disciples were about to have the world collapse in on them, our Lord spent so much time in the upper room. So that Upper Room discourse in John 14, 15, 16, speaking to them about the mystery of the Trinity. If anything could underline the necessity of Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, that must surely be it. It is striking. You, you, your disciples are ready to have their whole world collapse. You have one last meal and one last evening with them prior to your crucifixion. You might want to lay out, just answer the baptism question or something. Jesus just really clarify Divine sovereignty, human responsibility. What does he spend most of his time talking about, in one way or another? It's about the Trinity. It's about his relationship to the Father, and it's about the coming of the Holy Spirit. And even his prayer in John 17 is a robustly Trinitarian prayer. Surely Sinclair is right. What else could underline the supreme importance of the doctrine of the Trinity? And yet, when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, most Christians are poor in understanding, poorer in their articulation, and poorest of all in how the doctrine matters in real life. Some people have reflected, and I hope this isn't true, but sometimes it could feel like it's true, that if somehow a church council just discovered or announced next week, actually there are two persons in the Trinity, actually there are seven persons in the Trinity, sorry, go about your business. For a lot of Christians, they might say, huh, okay, change a couple of songs, but cool, let's keep going. Would our theology, our worship, our living to God change if we didn't have the doctrine of the Trinity? One 20th-century Catholic theologian has said, and I'll come back to this later, but he has said, tongue-in-cheek, "The Trinity is a matter of five notions or properties, four relations, three persons, two processions, one substance, and no understanding." I do want to unpack that. And so he's making a a jab at Aquinas, but we'll come and see what did he mean by five notions, four relations, three persons, two processions, one substance, and hopefully more than no understanding. The great Creeds and confessions of the church are structured around Our God as three and one. You know, the Apostles' Creed, it's divided into three sections: I believe in God the Father, I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, I believe in the Holy Spirit. That symbol, as it's called, the Apostles' Creed, they'll form a couple centuries later, does have its origins into the middle part of the second century. The questions put to baptismal candidates was a more or less what we recite in the Apostles' Creed. And they asked them three questions about, do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in the Son? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? The Athanasian Creed claims, "Quote, this is the Catholic faith, small C, that we worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person or the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal." The Belgic Confession says, "In keeping with this truth and the word of God, we believe in one God, who is one single essence, in whom there are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties, namely Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." If we are to have a historic, robust, biblical understanding of God, we must know him as Trinity. And yet, you talk to college students, you talk to even in many good PCA, ARP churches, they could hopefully get a basic three and one, but many of them would end up like that Lutheran satire video of St. Patrick trying to understand the Trinity. Oh, Patrick, go watch it sometimes. And they're explaining, their explanation would be modalism, would be partialism, would be Voltron, as the video says. We'll get to those heresies in a little bit. When you think about all that is in the doctrine of the Trinity, there's a lot of precise terminology, which we'll come to. There's a lot of heresies, and we'll explain some of them. But at its most fundamental and biblical level, we can say that the doctrine of the Trinity is what we're trying to explain by these seven imminently biblical statements. Probably seen this in a diagram before, but the doctrine of the Trinity can be summarized in seven statements: There is only one God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not the Father. All of the important theological terminology, which we'll come to, all of the dangers of the various heretical deviations have to do with these seven statements and how they all hold together, because each one of these seven statements is imminently biblical. Start with the first: There is one God. I've already seen that. Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Isaiah 44:6, "This is what the Lord says, Israel's King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: 'I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.'" Judaism was monotheistic. Monotheism was Judaism unique among all the religions in that part of the world, and maybe anywhere in the world, was monotheism. First Timothy 1:17, "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be glory forever and ever. Amen." So there's one God. The Father is God. More than 30 references in the New Testament to God and Father, or God the Father. John 6:27, "Do not work for the food that spoils but for food that endures, which the Son of Man will give you, on him God the Father has placed his seal." Or Titus 1:4, "Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." This one usually doesn't have to be proved, it's so obvious and in so many places. The Father is God. Third, the Son is God. This, we go into much more detail in Christology, but just some of the familiar passages you can jot them down. John 1:1-3, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Obvious derivation from Genesis chapter 1. "In the beginning was God." In the beginning, God created. But here we start with "In the beginning God," and then the Word. But the Word is not just some effulgence or emanation from this God, but the Word was God. So we now have clear multiplicity, a plurality of persons, yet the Word was God. John 8:58, "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am." Reference to Exodus 3. He's claiming to be the "I AM" that appeared to Moses. Unless there be any confusion about what he's saying, we read at this, they picked up stones to stone him. They were better theologians than some in our day who, well, I don't know, did Jesus really think he was God? They understood he thought he was God, which is why they wanted to kill him. Matthew 26:63-65, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man who had sit at the right hand of the Mighty One, and it says they tore their clothes and said, "He has spoken blasphemy." Mark 2:5-7, he heals the paralytic, and they are outraged. "Why does this fellow talk like this? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Luke 24:51-52, "While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him." No good Jew is going to worship anyone other than God. And we see what happens in Acts when somebody's worshiped who's not God and get killed on the spot. Paul is pushing people away. Now, don't do that. I'm a man of like nature with you. Jesus receives worship. Colossians 2:9, "In Christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form." Hebrews 1:3, "The Son is the radiance of God's glory, the exact imprint of his nature." John 20:28, Thomas says, finally, when he realizes who it is who's with him, "My Lord and my God." Titus 2:13, "our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." Revelation 22:13, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." Jesus says that. You can multiply statements where the Son is clearly God. The Holy Spirit is God. Hebrews 9:14, he is called the eternal Spirit. First Corinthians 3:16, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" So those are two things, to be God's temple and to have God's Spirit live in you. First Corinthians 6:19, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit whom you have received from God?" God's temple, temple of the Holy Spirit, is to say the same thing, because the Holy Spirit is God. The classic text is Acts 5:3 and 4. Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?" And then later he says, "What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men, but to God." In the same breath, Peter can say, "You lied to the Holy Spirit." Two sentences later, "You lied to God." There's lots of theological terminology to be worked out, but there's no sense that the people were scandalized by that statement already in the earliest days and weeks of the church. For Peter to say, "The Holy Spirit and God, same?" "Yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense. That's what we believe." Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is God.

At the same time, these three persons are not identical. There are distinct persons in the Godhead. We have strong hints of this in the Old Testament. The very first verses of the Bible. How does God create? He creates by means of his Word. He speaks, and that which did not exist comes into being. And he is there, hovering over the deep, brooding over the deep, as it were, is the Spirit of God. In the first three verses of the Bible, God is creating by means of his Word and his Spirit. Genesis 1:26, "There's lots of debate on how to understand the, 'Let us make man in our image.' Is that just a plural of majesty? Is it a reference to the Angelic Council?" Uh, I agree with the many theologians who have said, no, there's there's already here a suggestion that there is a plurality in God. "Let us make man." It's not just a reference to the Angelic Council because he's making man in the image of God, not the angels. God doesn't elsewhere speak in this sort of royal "we." And now we shall come down. Now, let us make man in our own image. That God is, as we will see, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's an "us." Psalm 2:7, "He said to me, 'You are my son; today I become your Father.'" Or Daniel 7, where one like the Son of Man stands before the Ancient of Days. So all throughout the Old Testament, you have these glimpses. What, what must they have thought with Daniel's Vision? Clearly, the one like a Son of Man is divine, but he's coming before the Ancient of Days. So how is this? We know there's one God, but here we have two divine persons. And then the New Testament witness makes this even clearer. "Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Or Galatians 4:6, "Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who cries out, 'Abba, Father.'" There are all these passages in the New Testament that put together God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And what's so striking is Paul, or whoever is writing, doesn't even feel the need to try to explain. It's just intuitively understood that when we speak of God, we're speaking of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Another example, First Corinthians 12, "There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them." Those are three parallel statements referring to gifts or services. One, they're from the Spirit. They're from the Lord. They're from God, meaning God the Father. First Peter 1 and 2, "To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ." There's another one of those triadic formulas. And most common is in the book of Ephesians. Could really do a nice half-hour Sunday school lesson, our UF lesson, sermon sometime on the doctrine of the Trinity in the book of Ephesians, because there are all of these triadic structures. For example, Ephesians 1:13 and 14 says, "You have been included in Christ, sealed with the Holy Spirit, guaranteeing our inheritance as God's possession." Spirit, Son, God the Father. 2:18, "For through him we have, that is Christ, we have access to the Father by one Spirit." Ephesians 2:20-22, the church is likened to a building with Jesus as the chief cornerstone, rising to become a temple in the Lord, in which God lives by the Spirit. Ephesians 3, "I kneel before the Father, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." Ephesians 4, "one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all." Ephesians 5, "be filled with the Spirit, making music to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father." Or finally, in Ephesians chapter 6, the spiritual warfare passage, "Be strong in the Lord, put on the full armor of God, pray in the Spirit." Over and over again in Ephesians, it's, it's as if Paul could hardly write without or think without thinking in Trinitarian terms. And it's inspiring, and maybe perhaps a bit of a rebuke to us, that it's, it's easy for most Christians to not think in Trinitarian terms, but supremely so in this letter to the Ephesians, all over the place. When he thinks and downloads his apostolic brain, he's downloading in these three-fold statements: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. All of these seven statements, therefore, can be shown to be true from clear, careful exegesis of biblical texts. If you're trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to someone, yes, don't try the apple analogy. Don't try water, ice, vapor. My kids came back from school a year or two ago, and because they're, you know, the kids have a Systematic Theology professor and they've heard this little speech, they came like tearing in, rushing in. And I love our school, one of our teachers did the apple analogy. I think it was kind of like, you're in charge, you should fire them. Well, no, we're not. Let's, it happens often. And later, I think somehow it came back and someone apologized, "I'm so sorry, I saw your kids in the water, ice, vapor. I didn't mean it." Uh, you've maybe seen this diagram, which has been around for a long time. Like any diagram, it has problems. But if I had three minutes on the back of a napkin and I wanted to try to explain the Trinity, I would do these seven statements. And you can do it like this. Then you, uh, make these here and you say, "Is not." You can make it much prettier. Father is God. Son is God. Holy Spirit is God. Father is not the Son. Son is not the Spirit. Spirit is not the Father. Those are the seven statements. In this, this diagram has been around for a long time. The, the danger with it is it can look like, well, there's sort of, uh, this other thing, God, who's in the middle, and then the Father is this, uh, so are there four things? So it's not perfect. But just for laying out these seven statements, I've used this before when people, well, I want an analogy. Well, it's God. There's not an analogy, a human analogy that works. But this at least puts there to begin to think about some of the categories. It's important that we lay this out at the beginning to understand as we get into the theological exploration that the later language that would be employed is all in an effort to safeguard these statements. Now, it's not that they necessarily laid out the seven statements just like this, but what they're trying to do is, okay, give, what are the right words? What are the right distinctions? What are the right categories? How can I say all of this, which is all clearly in the Bible? How can I say all of this? Give me the right words to say all of this and say it all at the same time. And say one of the things without denying one of the other things. In one sense, all the Credo formulations and theological terminology and philosophical apologetics have to do with safeguarding each of these statements without denying any of the other six. When the ancient Creeds or the Christian theologians employ extra-biblical terminology that demand careful theological nuance, they're not trying to make the Bible say what it doesn't say. They're trying to clarify and defend what they do see the Bible's saying. So extra-biblical terminology is sometimes essential to protect what the Bible says. We see this in history, most prominently the Council of Nicaea. There were lots of people in the middle who said, well, let's just use, let's just quote Bible verses. Can't we just use the language of the Bible? Well, that sounds very good, except you realize you're meaning something different by quoting that verse than I'm meaning. And actually, the differences that we have in what we mean by these verses is really, really important. And so it isn't always enough just to say, we all quote the Bible, and we all use the Bible's terms. Sometimes you have to employ extra-biblical terminology in order to be really clear about what you are saying and to understand where the differences are and why they matter.

All right, we're at a good stopping point. Take a five-minute break, and we're going to come back and we're going to start to look at the theological terms to define and defend all of this. Five minutes. I want to come back to this statement I mentioned earlier. This quip comes from the 20th-century Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan, who said, "The Trinity is a matter of five notions or properties, four relations, three persons, two processions, one substance, and no understanding." He obviously meant that as a kind of joke, a kind of wry observation about how intricate and esoteric the Trinity can seem. And yet, it does provide a good introduction into the complicated world of Trinitarian theology. This comes in particular from Aquinas's Summa, question 32, article 3, though all several questions around there have to do with the Trinity and the persons. So what did Aquinas mean when he said there are five notions? This three persons, you've heard that language. This may be new language. He said there are five notions. Well, a notion, kind of like we use the word a notion, a notion is an idea whereby we know a divine person. An idea whereby we know a divine person. Aquinas argued there were five notions: ineffability, that's the confusing one, but it's not confusing, it's just a new word, paternity, affiliation, common inspiration, and procession. He said these are five notions or ideas that we associate whereby we can know the divine persons. So the Father is known by ineffability, which simply means incapable of being born. It's what the word literally means, but in Trinitarian theology, it means the Father is from no one. He's from no one. He's ineffable. So he's not generated, begotten, proceeding from any other. And he's known by his paternity, just another word for his his fatherhood. The Father is known by ineffability and paternity. The Son is known by affiliation. It's a word for sonship. He's known by affiliation because he is a son to the Father. And the Father and the Son both have this notion of common spiration. To spirit is to breathe out. So the Father and the Son, at least in Western Trinitarian thought, the Father and the Son both spirit, breathe out the Holy Spirit. It is a common inspiration. And then the notion associated with the Holy Spirit is procession, because the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. So five notions. We'll give you a chance for questions, but let's go through the rest of this little quip. Trinity is a matter of five notions or properties. Now, Paul's right there, because I think Lonergan has not used the terminology exactly how Aquinas does it, because a notion in Aquinas is not identical to a property. A property is what is proper to each divine person alone. So a notion is an idea whereby we know a divine person. A property is that which is proper to each divine person alone. So there are Aquinas's five notions, but there are only four properties. Why? Because common inspiration is a notion of both the Father and the Son, so it cannot be a property because it is not proper to only one person. So these would be five notions, and then, well, this will get confusing here, then this would be four properties, so not common inspiration. So properties and notions were not identical. But going on with Lonergan, so we just need to correct his joke for a moment. Four relations. So look again at these five notions. Why does Aquinas say there are four relations? Because ineffability is not a relation. It isn't. It does not tell you something in relation to one of the other persons. It simply says that the Father is not coming from anything. So now we got to draw over here. These are the four relations because each of these are given relative to one of the other persons. The Father is a Father because he has a Son. The Son is a Son because he has a Father. And the Spirit is related to the Father and the Son by common spiration, by proceeding from the both. So these are the four relations. Three persons. Now we've at least heard this before. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The persons are distinguished. Well, I'll have a lecture on this, which we may get to after.

The break, or maybe next week. The persons are distinguished by their relations of origin. We'll see why this is important if any of you followed the Trinitarian debates from 2016, and they've continued to trickle on. Those debates had to do with: Do we know God? Are the persons of God distinguished by relationships of authority and submission? That is not the right way to conceive of the distinctions among the persons. Historically, the persons of the Trinity are distinguished not by relations of authority and submission, but by these relations of origin, or what Aquinas calls personal notions.

So, we have these five notions, but then there are personal notions in assibility and commonspiration. This is where it, it all gets so confusing. Aquinas says those are notions of the person, but they are not personal notions. So, a personal notion is that which constitutes a Divine person. So, he said these three are personal notions: paternity, affiliation, whoops, I gotta go down here to procession, or the personal notions. That is, the relations of origin. The Father is the Father because He begets a Son. The Son is a Son because He's begotten by the Father. The Spirit is the Spirit because He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Confused? Let's keep going.

Three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, distinguished by the relations of origin, or can say their personal notions: paternity, affiliation, procession. Then Aquinas says, it's just confusing. He said there are actually two processions. Now, what do we mean by the word procession? A procession refers to the origin of one thing from another. The origin of one thing from another. You should not hear here in the word procession, creation, because you will misunderstand what is meant by these terms. If you think, if we, we are prone to think in very physical, concrete, biological terms. So, even now, you may be thinking, now wait a minute, so the Father originates from no one, but the Son originates from the Father. That makes it sound like the Son is a creation of the Father. That's why the Nicene Creed has "begotten not made," because they're trying to explain how this origin works. It's one kind of origin. It's not a human kind of origin. But a procession is how one thing originates from another. So, the word procession is usually associated with the Holy Spirit, but the Son also, in another sense, proceeds from the Father. What we call, in a way, affiliation and procession are saying the same thing. But affiliation is saying it's of a Son from a Father. But affiliation is a kind of procession. How does the Son, how has He been begotten from the Father? That's a type of procession. But we call it generation or affiliation because the relationship is Father to Son. Where we use the more generic term for the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son.

So, Aquinas says there are two processions, and then there is one substance. The three persons of the Trinity share the same substance or essence or nature. They all possess the same god-ness. That's what we mean by substance. One person is not more God than another. One person is not less God than another. There's only one God, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God, equal in glory, rank, and power. So, our lines have gotten all confused here: five notions, four properties, four relations, three personal notions or relations of origin, two processions, one substance. This is what Aquinas lays out and has become much of the language throughout the the Western church. This language of of notions is less frequent now, but it still is important to understand these terms. And how an assibility, uh, sometimes it's used with its Greek term, which means the same thing, but this is the Latin version. Just means unable to be born, not begotten, not generated of anyone. It's important to realize in this, because one of the objections that Aquinas and others raise as well, if you have five notions, why is God a Trinity instead of a quinary? Why is, why is He three and not five? Is this a five-fold God? Well, he says no, because in a philosophical sense, the substance of God has reality, and the persons are realities. But notions, properties, relations, these are not strictly speaking philosophical realities. You can think of these, these are concepts, ideas, ways to try to describe this. Where essence and persons have the the philosophical property of a reality. Again, that's hard to conceive of, because we don't want to think of it in material terms, but there's, there's something there. So, that's why God is three. He's Trinity and not a quadranity or a quinary. He's not four, he's not five. He's three.

Let's talk about the three and the one for a bit, and then we'll, we'll see what questions you have. So, you got five notions, four properties. It's important to at least have those categories. But the main thing we want to understand: one essence, three distinct persons. Those are the key words. It took some time for the church to agree upon this language, and so it can be confusing. Going back, and sometimes they use the same words in different ways. And these are not biblical words, but they are meaning to safeguard biblical truth. So, essence or ousia, being in in the Greek, god-ness. All three share the same god-ness. One does not have a different sort of god-ness than another. That's what we mean by essence, substance. A person.

You have the language of a subsistence or hypostasis or hupostasis. You put your emphasis on either syllable. Here's how you would define a person or a subsistence. Think a particular individual, distinct from others. That's what I mean, a particular individual, distinct from others. Even that language, individual, could be misunderstood as well. I'm an individual, you're an individual. Subsistence, the Divine persons are said to be subsistencies or hypostases. If you want to make it plural, you, you add an 'e' instead of an 'i', because all three persons subsist in the Divine nature. It's important that they use the word subsistence, not existence, not three existences, which would suggest too much three independent beings who have their own ontological existence. But they use the language of a subsistence. All of this language, theologians trying to find a way to say, well, there are these three somethings, and they're not the same somethings, but they are all the same God, but they're not three gods. So, in the history of the church, the language that has proven most helpful is this language of essence, nature, being, and then subsistence, hypostasis, or person.

Sometimes it's easier to explain what we mean with the Trinity by explaining what we do not mean. We could spend quite a bit of time on each of these heresies. It's not a church history class. Let me just introduce them to you so you understand the concepts and what to avoid. So, several historical views which proved to be unorthodox. One can call adoptionism. You can see in the, in case I leave these up on the board, let me just make clear, bad. Okay, what I'm outlining here, bad. Don't want the auditors to come in. Uh, adoptionism, sometimes called monarchianism, because there is only one monarch. It is so emphasizing the Father's kingship. So, in adoptionism, there is a oneness of person. The Son and the Spirit subsist in the Divine Essence as impersonal attributes. It's called adoptionism because it teaches that the power of God came upon Jesus at His baptism, and He was adopted. He was not deity. His humanity was deified. The Son and the Spirit then are dynamic operations within God. Proponents of this basic category of views would be Theodotus, Paul of Samosata, which always makes me think of Sammy Sosa, different person, Paul of Samosata. Later, after the Reformation, Socinus and Unitarians. So, this is a oneness of God, a monarchism. There is one God. The Father is the King. The Son and the Spirit subsist as impersonal attributes.

A second error, it's called Sabellianism, or known as modalism. Probably heard of this before. That the persons of the Trinity exist as modes of the one Divine Being. So, God is a unity characterized by one nature and one person. So, whereas in Monarchianism, adoptionism, the Father is God, and the Son and the Spirit subsist as dynamic operations within God, in Sabellianism, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different names for, but identical with, one God. So, God is, you might say, one person with three names: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three roles, three three modes of being. This is why the ice, water, vapor analogy doesn't work, because that's H2O in three modes of being. Proponents: Praxeas, Sabellius, from which it gets its name. Oneness Pentecostals, or Jesus Only Pentecostals. We've had people at RTS who have grown up in that tradition, they've rejected it. Don't worry. You may find people who have that. Oneness Pentecostal, TD Jakes is the one that's Pentecostal. TD Jakes has been influential at Elevation. I don't know what they believe about the Trinity. I hope that they're more Orthodox than he is. But it's basically Sabellianism or modalism. God is one person known by three names, existing in three modes of beings.

The third type of error, historically, Arianism. What we might call subordinationism. We'll come back to later. There is a, there is a way to speak of the Son being subordinate to the Father. We have to be careful with that language, because sub-order just means you, you are ordered under. So, it is true: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's a reason that we don't baptize in the name of the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. There is a common order. The, the word in Greek, the theological word, is *taxis*. There is an order that we speak. The Son is begotten of the Father. The Father's not begotten of the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not the other way around. So, all of that is a certain order to the Trinity. And if you are ordering it like this, this is a sub-order. So, there is a way to speak of subordination which can be orthodox. This is the way not to speak of subordination. In Arianism, as you probably know, the full Divine Essence is identified only with the Father. So, that the Son and the Spirit are separate entities who do not fully share the Divine nature. They are subordinate in rank, in power, in glory, and in being to the Father. So, that subordination, when you are lesser or greater in rank, power, glory, authority, or being, is a heretical subordination. In Arianism, then, famously, there was "when the Son was not." That was the famous line from Arius's poem. "There was when the Son was not." And notice, he didn't say "there was a time," because he didn't say this happened after creation. No, there was some, somewhere before time, there was when the Son was not. Some eternity passed. How you conceive of that was the Father, and somewhere when the Son comes into being. "There was when the Son was not." Athanasius, Nicaea, Constantinople reject this subordinationism. Proponents would be Arius, although it seems Arius wasn't a particularly robust thinker, but he was a popularizer, and these ideas became associated with his name. Jehovah's Witnesses, other cults, which are essentially Arian in their understanding of the person of Christ.

Then, more obviously, would be the error of tri-theism. That there are just three gods. And you might say, well, where was that in the early church? Well, it wasn't so much in the early church. They held to one God. They weren't multiplying gods yet. I would argue that this is trying to be fair, but, but more or less, the, the doctrine of the Trinity in the Mormon church. One of their apostles, Bruce McConkie, says, quote, "Monotheism is the doctrine or the belief that there is but one God. If this is prop, if this is properly interpreted to mean that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, each of whom is a separate and distinct godly personage, or one God meaning one Godhead, then true Saints are monotheists." So, you read that and you think, so are you monotheist or not? Notice, there would, there would not be an easy, "yes, we're monotheists." There's a lot of hedging. If you mean, he says, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who are separate and distinct godly personages, and even notice their, they use the word personage rather than person, they are not comfortable with the Nicene Orthodox tradition. If you mean that they are all one Godhead, then sure, we're monotheists. But that's not the same as what Nicaea means. Here's another Mormon theologian, uh, Millet, Robert, I think I didn't write down his first name. He says, "To clarify, the Latter-day Saints believe in the three members of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but they believe they are three distinct beings, three separate gods. Now, to be sure, the scriptures, including Latter-day Saint scriptures, teach that the members of the Godhead are one. In fact, we believe they are infinitely more one than they are separate." This is where, in some of you, inevitably, someone does a paper on Mormonism. And that's a fine paper topic. Just make sure if you do it, go read what the Mormons say. So, I don't want a paper, it's easy to do a paper and just get the Christian apologist who points out Mormons are bonkers or something. That's not fair. If you're going to critique Mormonism, read what they say. Try to do the, the fairest interpretation of what they're saying, and then there's plenty of room to critique them. So, he says right here, "They are three distinct beings, three separate gods, but they're infinitely more one than they are separate." So, in Mormon theology, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods, but they can, in their minds, claim monotheism. And I'm not saying they're not trying to cast aspersions on their motives, that they're trying to fool people, but in their thinking, that's monotheism, because there is, you might say, an organic relational oneness. I don't know if they would own this analogy or not, but it might be like a husband and wife say, "Yes, we're two separate people, but even more so in a truest sense, we're one. We're one flesh." So, if you say, "Are you just one?" "Well, yes, absolutely. We have come together and we are so close and so in and with and loving each other, we are fundamentally husband and wife, one flesh." Well, that's true, but that's not what is meant by historic Orthodoxy and understanding the oneness of God. Here's another quote from Millet. "Jesus Christ is the central figure in the doctrine and practice of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is God the second, the Redeemer." Capital S, God the second. That's their own language to refer to Jesus as God the second. So, if you talk to a Mormon, "Do you believe Jesus is God?" They will likely say, "Absolutely. We believe that He is God." But when you press in, now the Mormon you're talking to may or may not know these distinctions, but these theologians do. They understand, "Well, not the same as God the Father." And in fact, then when you understand, uh, Mormon eschatology, and the hope for each of us is to have a god-like existence, which is different than a New Testament understanding that we become like God in terms of character and union with Christ. No, there is an ontological, because once you have the, the Son and the Spirit, they are God, but we're also God, or capable of becoming gods, in not just a moral union sense, but in a true ontological sense. So, the doctrine of God and of the Trinity in Mormonism is profoundly different.

So, in Orthodox Christianity, then, the essence, God is one. The Divine Essence is held in common by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are consubstantial, they are co-inherent, co-equal, co-eternal. The three eternal hypostases or subsistencies subsist in distinctions but not division. They are unique persons in regard to their relations of origin. In fact, though it's not, I wouldn't say it's wrong to speak of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in relationship with each other, just be careful. There's a danger with that language. The more traditional language is to speak of the relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is, the Father is not the Son because He's a Father, and the Son relates to the Father as a Father and Son, and so on. Those relations. Now, what, what is the difference between a relationship? A relationship begins to put into our mind not three subsistencies of the one God, but three beings coming together in a big hug. That you've got a relationship with each other, and the Father's like, "Come over here, Son," and the Son's like, "Spirit, come over here," and they're all, "I love you, I love you, I love you. We just love each other so much, and we get a big hug. We're one, we're three, we're one, we're three." That sort of relationship is not the way that they conceived of the Trinity. It's extremely difficult because our mind wants to run to some sort of concrete, physical understanding that makes sense to us, and it's very hard, if not impossible, to get that concrete picture in our head. So, we're left with what is very difficult for us as human beings, and that is to think of terms, words, concepts. And when we come to the Trinity, to say, "What we don't mean." Okay, I, I don't mean that. I don't mean that. I don't mean three gods. I don't mean three parts of God. I don't mean three modes of God. Well, what do you mean? Well, I mean these words. We'll say more. Well, um, let me tell you again what I don't mean. There, there is a mystery, not an irrational mystery, but something supra-rational, beyond fully human comprehension. And of course, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, on and on, would be the Orthodox proponents of this view of the Trinity.

Let me wrap this up, and we'll take some questions, with some doxological implications. All right, so the doctrine of the Trinity, why does any of this matter? Even here, we have to be careful, lest we think the doctrine of the Trinity is there to give us relational advice, or the doctrine of Trinity is there to help make sense of our marriage, or the doctor. So, with some trepidation, let's at least try to draw some implications from the doctrine of the Trinity. Many of these I've gotten from Robert Letham's fine book on the Trinity. So, one is to think of creation. Creation is by the Father, through the Son, and the Spirit. God, unlike the myths of the ancient Near East, does not require intermediaries to achieve His ends. He does not have to go outside of Himself. Creation is not the result of some conflict among the gods or the goddesses. God the Father creates by means of the Son and the Spirit. And we get that. But, but this is important thing about creation. The fact that God creates by *logos*, the Word, and the Spirit of God was there hovering over the deep, and Spirit means that it's the same Triune God operative in our redemption as was operative in our creation. I think some Christians think, if they were just conceiving of it, you got God, I don't really know that the Trinity's doing much at creation, but you know, God the Father is doing cool stuff, and then later the Son and the Spirit come in, and there they help save us. Well, that begins to feel like a different God of redemption than the God of creation. So, this reinforces the same God. His ordering of creation is threefold: Divine Fiat, and then there is the work of setting or separating, and then there is the activity of the creator of the creature to tend the garden. This too parallels the work of re-creation, where God by supernatural, sovereign, unilateral grace speaks new life into us, just like He spoke creation into existence, and then He goes about reshaping us and making us, and then there is also human activity in obedience to God. So, that threefold pattern in creation: creation by Divine Fiat, and then the work of God in creation, and then human response to that creation, is the same threefold pattern we find in re-creation. God sovereignly breathes life where there was no life. So, the Trinity in creation.

Second implication for evangelism and missions. Again, I think I recall reading this verse from Letham. He says, if there are two major challenges to Trinitarian Christianity, or just a Christianity, Orthodox Christianity in our world, you could label them: the challenge of Islam and the challenge of postmodernism. Islam: a radical unity. There is just one God. Allah is God. Muhammad is his Prophet. No, no, Jesus is a prophet, but absolutely is not a Divine person. So, there's a radical unity in Islam. In postmodernism, there is a radical diversity. You go to college or you go to university, and the unity in the university is almost completely disappeared. It's supposed to be a place that you go and shows you how things all come together, and you could do that when universities like the very first universities, Cambridge, Oxford, Paris, are founded as Christian places of learning to show you how all of this truth comes together in service of God. It is, it was a university. We don't have universities, by and large, at least secular, you know, they are pluriversities, and each department is doing its own thing, and there's no sort of understanding they all come together. So, you have the challenge of postmodernism. The doctrine of the Trinity shows us things can be distinguishable but the same, and distinguishable things can still be one. To contrary to Islam, things can be distinguishable, but they're the same. And contrary to postmodernism, distinguishable things can still be one. There is a metaphysical explanation for the, the ancient problem of the one and the many.

Three Trinitarian implications for worship. Prayer, worship, and communion are Trinitarian acts. We pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, are there some examples? There are a few examples in scripture, prayer directed immediately to the Son. I don't think you're doing something errant by praying, "Holy Spirit, come," or praying to the Son. So, it's not the, you know, the angel language police come down immediately and strip you of your ordination if you do that. But I would say for those of you who will be leading in public worship, it ought to be the normal, regular pattern that people hear you praying to the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Would people hear in your weekly pastoral prayer something of the Trinity? You don't want to do the confused, well-intentioned but confused person who starts spewing out multiple Trinitarian heresies as they pray, "Dear Father God, we just love You so much. We thank You, Father, for dying on the cross, Lord Jesus, Spirit." It's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We're just, stuff is lots of heresies are multiplying." A time is coming, Jesus said, when worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Isn't that itself a hint at the Trinity and the further revelation of the Trinity that's that's coming? John 4. And is coming in the Upper Room to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. "I am the truth."

A fourth implication is how we think of love. Love is eternal because there was always love among the persons of the Trinity. Now, I suppose you could say, even if God was just one and not three, suppose could love himself, but it's hard to conceive of love just terminating the same subject and object. Love moves toward another. That's what love is. And because God is Triune, it means love is eternal. God did not have to create in order for love to exist. It wasn't that once He made human beings, now there's love in the world because finally there is something other than God for Him to love and to be loved. No, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always dwelt in this ontological communion of love.

Fifth, and here's where we will venture some relationship that we want to be careful. There is an implication in relationships. Communion and communication are inherent in God's very being. Though we want to be careful, not necessarily to think of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as relationships, yet if we use the language of three persons communing and communicating, then the fact that we have communion with each other and communicate with each other is, I think fairly, we can say a reflection of the Divine nature.

Sixth, there's an implication for how we treat people. What I mean is, there can be mutuality without indistinguishability. It is possible, say it another way, it is possible to know someone and be known by someone while still retaining individuality. I guess the therapeutic term would be codependence, when you're so enmeshed in someone's life and problems that you lose your own sense of who you are, and you can't really exist apart from them existing. And that's unhealthy. So, that the doctrine of the Trinity does give us a metaphysical framework to show how persons can retain some individuality and yet be fully committed to others. Mutual support and equality without collapsing personal distinction. There's a metaphysical framework to have individuality and mutuality. We see the Father advances the kingdom by means of His Son. The Son glorifies the Father and does what pleases Him. The Spirit speaks not of Himself, but of the Son. And the Father glorifies the Son. Each of the three delights in the good of the other, and yet each one is not the other. Individuality and mutuality.

And then, finally, seventh implication: how we relate to God. John Owen is probably most well known for, but or he's the one most well known for exploring this Trinitarian idea in his book, *Communion with God*. Where he explains, in typical brilliant, confusing Owen fashion, how we are to have distinct communion with each person: with the Father as the authority, and the Son as the purchased treasury, and the Spirit as the immediate efficacy of God's saving work. We have communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that we know God not just as one, but we commune with Him as three. Owen is helpful. He gives a definition of what he means by communion. He means giving and receiving. Giving and receiving. So, to know that the Father is kind, tender, loving, unchanging, the great Fountain and spring of all the gracious fruits of love. He says, we receive this by faith. We believe it. The Father communicates this love to us in Christ. And then Owen says, we make a return of this love through Christ, our sacrifice, our brother, and the object of our worship. And we do so by means of the Spirit. So, Owen is brilliant in exploring all the ways Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we receive from them, and then they enable us to give and communicate in return. In Christ, we find, he says, sweetness, delight, safety, support. And the Father, we find that which is loving, unchanging, in the spring of all truth. In the Spirit, we find our sanctifier, our comforter. We have communion with each person of the Trinity.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this particular lecture is the famous line from Gregory of Nazianzus: "No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one." The, the two Gregories and Basil, the three Cappadocian Fathers, who were so instrumental in cementing and establishing the doctrine of the Trinity. Gregory says, "No sooner do I conceive of the one," so I'm thinking about God as one, "than I'm illumined by the splendor of the three. And no sooner do I distinguish the three than I'm led back to the one." May it be so for each of us in worship and prayer, in praise, that we can't think of God as one without three, and can't think of God as three without being drawn back to God as one.

Eternal generation. Here's a definition. And after this definition, you'll say, "I still don't understand." But here it is: Eternal generation refers to the never-beginning and never-ending act whereby God the Father communicates the Divine Essence to God the Son. The never-beginning, never-ending act whereby God the Father communicates the Divine Essence to God the Son. We are undoubtedly using human language to describe a divine mystery. I think Turretin says it is, eternal generation is hyperphysical, infinite, and ineffable. By hyperphysical, he doesn't mean super physical, he means beyond physical. So, don't think materially. Infinite, so it's eternal. That's the never-beginning, never-ending. And ineffable. When Turretin says something is ineffable, you're not going to fully understand it. It is an unchanging act that is ongoing, yet it is never incomplete. It's easier to say what it is not than what it is. So, eternal generation is without time. Remember, time is a way of speaking of duration, and eternity is another way of speaking of duration. Eternity is the way God is. So, eternal generation means the Son's begottenness did not happen at 8 AM one morning. Didn't happen at anything we can count as time. It never began and it never ends. So, it's without time. And it's without alteration. Without alteration, meaning there's no change in the Father or change in the Son. It is like human generation in that like begets like. I'm a DeYoung, I begat a DeYoung. And though it's parents don't always see it, everyone, every child that was born is, "Oh my goodness, that looks just like a DeYoung. That looks just like all your other kids." Like begets like. So, eternal generation is similar to that, in that the Father begets a Son like the Father. And yet, we must be careful that we don't think of it in any sort of physical terms. Human generation, you're physically producing. That's why the language is used of communicating, not creating, but communicating the Divine Essence. So, it's not the creation of a Divine being. It's not an act whereby the Son became divine. It is an act whereby the Father generates the person and communicates the essence. Generates the person by communication of the essence. So, it does not generate an essence. If eternal generation was generating an essence, it would be generating a distinct being. But the Father, Son, and Holy, the Son is the same being as the Father. It is generating the person by communication of the essence. That's why the language is always "begotten, not made." Saying we're trying to explain how the Father communicates the essence and generates the person, but we don't want anyone to think that this is a physical, first act of creation.

Why have Orthodox theologians been so adamant about eternal generation of the only begotten Son? Why has the language of eternal generation been so important? Well, eternal generation is trying to answer this question. And it's the question that almost everything, this is sort of a separate thing, but this, this, this are trying to answer this question: How do you have one God and three persons? Or to put it in technical language, how does the Godhead multiply personal subsistencies without multiplying essences? How does the Godhead multiply personal subsistences without multiplying essences? Put it another way, how can the Son be of the same godness as the Father, but not be the Father? Eternal generation is trying to answer that question. How the Son can have the same godness as the Father, but He is not the Father. That's why from the very early in the church's history, eternal generation was a critical doctrine for maintaining a right and proper view of God the Son. Here's how He can be of the same essence, because the Father is communicating the essence, never beginning, never ending, ongoing, yet not incomplete. Still, the, the, the Father is communicating His essence to the Son, such that the Son is of the same godness as the Father, but the Son is not the Father.

The Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of the same essence as the Father." That is the doctrine of eternal generation. "Before all ages." That's saying this is eternal. "God from God." So, just as much God from God, Light of Light. "True God from true God." You probably, in reciting the language, don't even pay attention to the "from." We sort of read it as "Son begotten from the Father," the, the godness of God, and the lightness of light. But it's "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God." All of that is speaking to the affiliation of the Son, His eternal begottenness, His eternal generation. He is the same true God who has His person generated, begotten from the true Father, who is God. And Nicaea adds "begotten not made," just to make clear we're not talking about any sort of physical generation of the same essence of the Father.

One of my favorite Christmas songs, I guess it's not just a Christmas song, "Of the Father's Love Begotten," or "O Come All Ye Faithful." "God of God, Light of Light, Lo, He abhors not the virgin's womb; Very God, begotten not created." We're singing about the doctrine of eternal generation at Christmas. Here's what Orsinus, here's how Orsinus puts it. Orsinus is the principal author of the Heidelberg Catechism. This is in his commentary on the catechism. "He is the true, proper, and natural Son of God, begotten from the essence of the Father. And if He has begotten from the essence of God, the same is therefore communicated to Him whole and entire. Since the Divine Essence is infinite, indivisible, and not communicated in part, therefore, inasmuch as the Son has the whole Essence communicated to Him, He is for this reason equal with the Father, and consequently true God." The doctrine of eternal generation was trying to safeguard both the full deity of the Son, because you cannot communicate an essence in part, you cannot communicate three-fifths of an essence, it's every bit the Father's essence, and yet to safeguard the distinction that the Father is not the Son. That's what this doctrine of eternal generation, again, with so many of these terms speaking of the Trinity, it's hard because our mind races to physical, concrete conceptions of it. And the language is saying, well, it's, we can't help but think that way and use terms that we're familiar with in that way, but just don't think of it quite in that way. Which is the same, similar with this next term. I know you still probably have questions there. We will have time, if not today, to come back when we have one more lecture on the Trinity to try to figure these things. So, we're going to take another pass at this and bringing it together, uh, in a week, or I guess two weeks, but let's press on and try to explain *perichoresis*.

So, eternal generation, and then this term *perichoresis*. It is the Greek term used to describe the eternal mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. That's the, the Greek term. This is the Latin term, *circumincessio*. Think of the word *circulatio*, circulates, sometimes a way to metaphorically describe this unceasing circulation of the Divine Essence. Let's back up a bit and think about scripture. It is a recurring theme from the lips of Jesus that the Father dwells in the Son. John 14: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." When Jesus prays the high priestly prayer, it's all rooted in the reality that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son. Paul in Colossians 1 testifies, "the incarnate Son, in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." So, it's that sort of biblical language that *perichoresis* is trying to explain. The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father. We say in this Spirit is in the Father and the Son. That the indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. So, they're distinct, as we saw: paternity, affiliation, procession. Those are their personal notions or their personal properties. And yet, we must not think Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of three faces in a yearbook. All right, I want to introduce you to, I love the Father. To return to my kids, love looking at their yearbooks all the time and pointing out this person, are you asking this person to homecoming, and what happened to this person? You don't want to think Father, Son, ah, there's the Father, and remember I sat by the Son in chemistry class, and there's the Spirit. *Perichoresis* helps us to realize, no, you can't think of them as three faces, because they all indwell each other. The Father indwells the Son, the Son indwells the Spirit, the Spirit indwells the Father, and of course, in reverse order. So, go back to circulation. Like any human analogy, it can be problematic, but that language or *circumincessio* is used to describe the unceasing circulation of the Divine Essence, such that each person is in the other two, while the others are in each one.

So, here's how Gerald Bray puts it. Again, at the risk of being too concrete, but sometimes you need to get concrete, and then you need to safeguard that, just so you can have a category. He says, *perichoresis* means all three persons occupy the same Divine space. You see the problem with that, because it's not space, it's not in a box. So, you don't want, oh, they're not three faces in a yearbook. It's like you just drew the Father, and then you do the Son, and the same, and you do the Spirit, all in the same. So, it can be overly concrete, but that helps us to understand all three persons occupy the same Divine space. We cannot see God without seeing all three persons at the same time. So, this *perichoresis*, mutual indwelling, is this still a word in Greece? Do they, what, what is it? Is it a normal word or just a theological word? Okay. Oh, do you? Okay. Wow, they're so cool. Mutual indwelling means at least two things. First, the three persons of the Trinity are all fully in one another. And second, it safeguards that each person of the Trinity is in full possession of the Divine Essence. So, that's what it's trying to safeguard. The three persons of the Trinity are fully in one another, and each person is in full possession of the Divine Essence. So, the Father's not the Son, the Son's not the Spirit, the Spirit's not the Father. *Perichoresis* doesn't deny any of that. What it maintains is that you cannot have one person of the Trinity without having the other two. You cannot have any person of the Trinity without having the fullness of God.

Here's what Augustine says: "Each are in each, and all in each, and each and all, and all are one." Well, thanks, Augie, that really cleared it up. "Each are in each, and all in each, and each and all, and all are one." That's Augustine on the Trinity, 6.10. "Each are in each, and all in each, and each and all, and all are one." Like so many aspects of Trinitarian theology, this is hard to grasp. So, we have to rely on these careful verbal definitions. We should not, I'll be hastened to add, as many have suggested this, we should not think of *perichoresis* as a kind of Trinitarian dance. Sometimes you hear this, "Ah, *perichoresis*, it's like the word choreography. It's the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all doing the dosey-doe. They're all in a dance together." I've probably said that at some point in my ministry as well. More careful theologians will tell you that there is not an etymological connection there, and more importantly, it's not the best theological way. Such an analogy is used by often social Trinitarian theologians. Social Trinitarianism, so conceives of the, the threeness that was sort of was hinting out with the danger of relationship. Social Trinitarianism, which was very dominant in 20th-century Trinitarian thought, so emphasizes the three-ness that it is a kind of such a distinction of persons that they don't occupy the same device. That's what's the problem with the analogy of a dance. Well, you're, you're all in an organic union, but you're not in a real, when you're dancing, you're not in a real mutual indwelling. And if any of my kids go to the homecoming dance and they seem to be mutually indwelling, they are dancing too close. We want to have space between. That's what the old, "leave space for the Holy Spirit," they used to say, just right there between, like that. So, don't do not do a church newsletter saying *perichoresis* is like the dance. It actually undermines the truth that *perichoresis* is meaning to protect, which is how can three persons simultaneously share the same undivided essence? How can you can share the same essence if you share it like a pie? Father gets a piece of the God pie, and the Son gets a piece. But it is undivided essence. So, how do you share that same undivided essence? Well, you don't want to say they waltz and step with each other, but that they co-inhere. So, that's also the language, co-inherence, or co-inhere. They inhere, they inside one another. So, that the persons are always and forever with and in one another, yet without merging, blending, or confusing. So, it's a firm, it's not eradicating the distinctions of the persons, because then you would get, you'd be at modalism, and then you'd be at Patripassianism, you'd have the Father dying on the cross, not the Father died. They are not just modes of being. So, you see how all of these things are trying, okay, what's, we want to keep affirming the one undivided essence that they all share equally, but we don't want to be tritheists. We don't want to be modalists. Okay, so *perichoresis* is trying to hold this together by affirming the mutual indwelling of each in each other. So, then we can worship our Triune God as truly three and truly one. That's *perichoresis*.

Which leads, let's, uh, skip over this for a moment to this doctrine again. We will try to pull this together when we come back after next week. Well, we have next week, and then we have fall break. So, it is a real Trinitarian cliffhanger. Here's what we mean by inseparable operations. Uh, you will see this Latin phrase, *Omnia opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt*. You don't have to know Latin. My Latin is pretty sketchy. "The works of the Trinity, ad extra, the external works of the Trinity are indivisible." That's what we mean, inseparable operations. The external works of the Trinity are indivisible. To put it another way, each person is operative in all of God's external works. This too has been central to the Nicene tradition and understanding the Trinity, and is also hard to understand. *Perichoresis* is hard to understand. Eternal generation is hard to understand. Inseparable operations, your first instinct is, "I don't think that can be right biblically." Not just, "I can't quite get it," but "How can that be? How can we say that the external operations of the Trinity are indivisible?" Because that sounds to us like, so the Father became incarnate, the Spirit died on the cross, the Father rose again. What do you mean, inseparable? Don't we clearly see only one person of the Trinity became incarnate? It was that incarnate person who died and rose again. So, aren't we smashing this all together, confusing the person, some sort of Sabellianism, if we say the, the operations are indivisible? No, that's not what we want to say. While an act of the Trinity may be appropriated to one person, the actions are not of distinct beings. That's what the doctrine is trying to safeguard. Certainly, we see an act is appropriated to one person. The Father did not die on the cross. But we do not want to think that the actions therefore were done of distinct beings. The unity of Trinitarian relations *ad intra*. So, this has *ad extra*, and these are the, the fancy terms, but they're really intuitive. Trinitarian relations *ad intra*, think of how the Trinity, the persons relate among themselves. And then *ad extra*, how those internal relations are then manifested in the external works of creation, redemption, and Providence. That's what we mean, Trinitarian opera *ad intra* and *ad extra*. *Perichoresis* helps to affirm and understand the inseparable operations *ad intra*, that the same, the persons occupy the same Divine space, if we can dare to put it that way. Inseparable operations, then, tell us, well, if the unity of those relations *ad intra* are there, then of course we must have the unity of Trinitarian operations *ad extra*. That you cannot divide into separate beings these works of the Trinity.

Another way to think about it. So, here's some other categories theologians sometimes use is to think about the difference between the principle of something and the subject. For example, the sending of the Son. The sending of the Son by the Father. They say, "How is, how does that inseparable opera?" Because it was the Son, the, the Son didn't send the Father, and the Father wasn't sent by the Son. Yeah, that's true. They are distinct persons. So, the Father, the sending of the Son by the Father, those are different subjects. But by the principle of the one essence, or by the principle of the whole Trinity, even as the subject of the sending is the Father. Inseparable operations are trying to help us understand how a unique, a unique act of one person can also be common to all three. So, that we do not see Father's kind of doing his thing, and Son's doing his thing. This is one of reasons, and there are many, why we should not conceive of Christ's death on the cross as blowing the Trinity apart at that moment. You know, one-third of the Trinity died, and the whole eternal Trinity was spinning out of control until the Son was.

Resurrected again. There's a lot of problems with that, and one of them is it strikes at these inseparable operations that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always working in, with, and among each other. Even if certain acts of that work are appropriated to one or the other. Let me try to flesh this out, literally flesh this out, by thinking about the Incarnation, because this is probably where it becomes most difficult.

Creation is a little bit easier to understand. The Father is the foundation, or the fountain, or the source of creation. The Son is the executor; he is the one by whom the Father creates. And the Spirit is the one who carries all things in creation and Providence to completion. So that's understanding creation with the inseparable works of the Trinity. It isn't to say that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are all meshed together in no activity is distinguished among the others. It is to say that the act of creation, all three persons are operative: Father, the fountain, the source; the Son, by whom; and the Spirit, carrying it out, bringing it to completion. Sort of makes sense with creation.

What about the Incarnation? It is true, only one of the Divine Persons becomes incarnate. What inseparable operations wants to defend is, make sure we don't understand that Incarnation to be a division of the essence. And that's true. It's true that it's not, because the Son reveals the Father. The human nature assumed by the Son, created and suited by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And even the Incarnation is at times described as a work of all three persons. Hebrews 10:5, the Incarnation is called a work of the Father. Philippians 2:7, it's called the work of the Son. Luke 1:35, the Incarnation is described as a work of the Spirit. Or the Christmas story in Matthew chapter 1. So yes, only one person of the Trinity becomes incarnate. We are not denying that at all. But we are saying, even in that activity of the Incarnation, we should not think that now the Son's kind of doing his thing, and the Father is off doing Father things, and the Spirit's off doing Spirit things, and they're not all operative in this one work.

And in fact, the Incarnation can be described in different ways as a work of the Father in its origination and plan and execution, the work of the Son in taking upon himself the form of a servant, and the work of the Holy Spirit in quickening and enlivening in the womb of Mary this incarnate Son to be born. The language, therefore, of inseparable operations is trying to hold together a unique act of one person is also in another sense common to all three. The external works of the Trinity are indivisible, such that each person is operative in all God's external works. So operative in each of those external works, even if they are not the same exact agency. So the Father's agency, the Son, the Father redeems by agency of his Son, the Son is that Redeemer, and yet it is also an act of the Father's redemption, and therefore sending his Son.

Questions before we try to finish with Philly okay? Yes, the Spirit draws, right? And then it works in reverse order. That's right. Yeah, yeah, very good. Yeah. Inseparable operations, and we, you know, we even pray that way sometimes. So Father, who have appointed us for salvation, and the Son, who is the Redeemer in time of his people, and the Holy Spirit, who then accomplishes or applies that salvation. So the author, the accomplisher, and the applier. And there's lots of different Trinitarian formulas.

Question? Yes. Well, I am too. Yes, they are. That question has come up many times in, uh, in the breaking up. No, it's a very good question. Just to complexify it. So it's not just a, a question. The question was about, in particular, the Son in his Incarnation. We got immutability, we got impassibility. The Son is fully God. He's suffering. It's not just a question, however, about immutability or impassibility. It is a question of the Son learning. The Son sleeping. The Son getting hungry. Jesus had to learn an alphabet. Somebody sat down and taught him how to read. So how does the omniscient God have to learn anything? These are all christological questions. So it comes to our mind most clearly with immutability and impassibility, but so with any number of these issues. And, you know, the brief response is to, as I said before, to understand that Christ, in taking upon a human nature, is enabling the one person. The one person now is constituted of two natures. So everything that is true that we're saying about God and His essence is true of that divine nature which Christ possesses. But Christ, as a theanthropic person, a God-man, has two natures. And it's by taking upon that second nature that the Son of God is able to do all of these ungodly things, chiefly that he dies. But none of that is affecting any change in the divine nature. In fact, the Son had to take on a human nature in order for the Son to accomplish those things and to live a truly human life. So the answer to that Trinitarian question is to go to what Turretin says is the other most complicated thing in theology, which is that the two natures. And to understand how Christ, in taking upon himself a human nature, that divine nature is not bereft of any of these qualities, and yet for a time seems veiled, seems hidden, because what you see most obviously in Christ is a human nature, a person like us. So Christ, the theanthropic man, the God-man, is a person now who suffered, died, underwent mutability. But what we say of the person, we do not say of the divine nature. Because he takes on a human nature, he is now, as the single person, able to do those things without affecting any change to that human nature. Also raises many questions. Let me go on. So I know I didn't answer it satisfactorily, because some of the questions are beyond final human comprehension.

Let me talk about this filioque clause before we finish. I just, this is on my mind whenever I even say the word. I think of the Michael Jackson song, "Smooth Criminal." Filioque. Okay. Filioque. But he's not saying filioque, saying "Eddie, are you okay?" or something in that song. But whenever I hear the song, I think of filioque. So just Michael Jackson doing his thing, talking about filioque. This is now, remember, this is Latin for "and the Son." Filioque. Sun. This is the cause of the Protestant-Catholic consequential division in the church. But even before that was the division of East and West because of this filioque clause. There's a long history to the controversy, which I don't have time to get into. But when we recite the Nicene Creed, so the Council of Nicaea, 325. I'm sure you learned this in church history. But what we recite is actually the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which then finalized in 381. And when we read the language of the Creed, it says, "The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son." Filioque. That word was added later. It was not there originally in 381. Now, the debate is, well, it was already, the idea was present, and the Cappadocians already taught that. So the theologians from the West argue, well, it wasn't there, but that's what we already believed, and that's what people taught. And so we were right some centuries later to make it official and add filioque. The Eastern Church, by which I mean Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, the Orthodox capital O branch of the church, saw this as a profound act of heresy and usurpation. They first of all thought, what right do you have to do this? Was it at an ecumenical council? What right do you have? You can't add to our Creed. How dare you? The Western Church says, well, we we weren't adding. We were not adding something that wasn't already believed or wasn't already taught. But we're making clear what needs to be present there. So it was also an ecclesiastical disagreement about where the authority can you, the Western Church, if the Pope says something, can you do this? No, you can't. The East said, more importantly for our consideration, was the theological debate. The Greek Orthodox worried that filioque established two rival arche or that's the Greek or principia in the Latin in the Godhead. So they thought that this was devaluing of the Father. And it is fascinating, even today in the Greek Orthodox Church, what a prominent role the Father is in their thought, and the fatherhood of God, and the Father as the originator, as the principle. So they thought if you say the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, you've just elevated, and you've this this Trinitarian taxis, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Greek Orthodox is, no, you've just now made Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You've you've created two principles, two arche. The Western reply was, no, we are not saying that the Father and the Son are equal sources of the Holy Spirit's procession, but that the Father and the Son are so in communion that here's their language, one in the same breathes. How could you conceive of the Father breathing except breathing through his Son? So even today, if you read some of the Eastern Orthodox theologians, there are kind of two schools of thought: one that's willing to say, we all sort of misunderstood each other. We were trying to protect different things, but what you really meant was the Father, the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and from the Father through the Son, can kind of live with that, and we just were trying to say different things. Or a more rigorous interpretation that would say, no, what you really did is heretical by putting the Father and Son as two principles. Likewise, from the Western side, you would have some who are much more insistent that filioque is really important for a proper understanding of the Son, because the West argued if you don't have this, then you are setting yourself up for a kind of subordinationism or a kind of quasi-Arianism that you have the Spirit sort of, the Father's doing his thing with the Son, and then the Father is doing his thing with the Holy Spirit, and you don't really have this taxis. Then you have this taxis, and then it feels like the Son and the Holy Spirit are dynamic operations. So they're both trying to protect something. At best, we could say they're both trying to protect something that is essential. Robert Letham, in his book, who's a bit more sympathetic to the Eastern side of things than most Western theologians might might be, is somewhat critical of the West for adding this. Though I would argue there is a good case to be made for asserting that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, from the Father through the Son, to put it most technically. For example, Romans 8:9 speaks of the Spirit of Christ. Galatians 4:6, God has sent the Spirit of his Son. John 16:7, "I will send the Comforter to you," Jesus says. John 15:26, "But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me." That became a key text on both sides. "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me." So you can hear one side say, well, it says he proceeds from the Father. And the other side said, well, but when he comes, Jesus says, "I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth." So yes, these passages are talking about the economic Trinity, we might say, the Trinity unfolding in time, how we view the works of the Trinity. So someone could argue, well, he's called the Spirit of Christ, but that's speaking about Christ pouring out the Spirit in time, where this is a conversation not about time, but about eternal procession. My response, yes, defending the Western view. My response would be, well, doesn't that pouring out in time suggest something about the procession in eternity? The fact that the Spirit is so often called the Spirit of Christ, that Jesus himself says, "I will send to you the Spirit." If the Son does that in time, doesn't it suggest that that is a reflection of some eternal origination? Just like the Father sending the Son in a moment of time, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son. We recognize, well, that's a reflection of the eternal begetting of the Father and the Son. And so the argument from the Western Church is that just as we see this temporally clearly existing, doesn't that reflect an eternal procession such that the Spirit is not just the Spirit of the Father, but the Spirit of the Son? The double procession. So you saw earlier with Aquinas, obviously a theologian of the West, in the Western tradition. Common inspiration is the Eastern Orthodox Church would not have common inspiration. They would not see the Father and the Son both spiriting out, except maybe if they nuanced it enough to say the Father through the Son, spiriting, exhaling the Spirit. So this is the debate with the filioque clause, which probably all of us have said many times in doing the Nicene Creed, and is a central act of division in the church. And you can argue whether it should have happened, whether it's a distinction without a difference. I think it is important. I'd like to think that you could go back in history, and the folks from the East were trying to defend something that was true about the Father, and the West was trying to defend something that was true about the Son, and that if they had gone to RTS, they could have found out how to bring it all together.

Next week, you will have your midterm, and then you will go and then fall break, and then we'll be back and bring this together. I know there are more questions. We're going to talk about some of these things, bringing together in the question about eternal relations of authority and submission. And then just when we think all the hard stuff's behind us, we're going to look at election and reprobation. So see you in a couple of weeks.