1 Corinthians 8, verse 4-6, Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no god but one, for even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom all things, and we exist through Him." Let's pray. Lord God, we bless Your name. We thank You for Your Word, for the Spirit who gave us this Word and has been promised to illumine our understanding. We ask that as we continue through these glorious truths that Your Spirit will indeed give us grasp of truth as well as practical outworkings and implications of the truth for us in daily living. We ask this for Christ's sake. Amen. All right, so last week we got through the first part of the doctrine of God. So, beginning with the four things that Scriptures teach—God is, the person of the Godhead is decreed, and the execution of His decrees. the definition of God, Spirit, in and of Himself, infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection, all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, everywhere present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." To wrap that up last week, one thing I just want to encourage you to do as One of the ways to begin your quiet time, your devotions in the morning is take one of these attributes and meditate on it. And get your mind stimulated and your affections stirred up by meditating on simply an attribute. It's a very good practice. So any other questions about this first part? what we know about God and how we know Him through His attributes, His word works. We'll learn more about Him through His word and works. All right, well then we come to question eight. Are there more gods than one? There is but one only, the living and true God. So this is a quite remarkable statement. It is exclusive to Christianity, and this reveals to us the doctrine of the Trinity. It's also spelled out in the Confession of Faith 2.3. It is interesting that here we get this fantastic doctrine of God and the Trinity, and you get three paragraphs. But part of that is they want to be careful not to say more than we should say. And the other part will be the fact that he's also revealed in his works, which is what we'll see in execution then of the decree in the works of creation and providence. But paragraph three, in the unity of the Godhead, so we've said that God is one. There'll be three persons of one substance, power, and eternity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. So you meet somebody on the street and they ask you, what do you guys mean by the Trinity? What's your answer? There's one God, one being, three persons. All right. One divine being who exists in three persons. Now, wherever each of you is in his own Christian development, this will have a degree of obscurity and incomprehensibility. I remember as a young Christian, as a teenager, you know, it's just I could say that and That's what we must be able to do is to affirm that truth. I can say that 60 years later, I grasp it much more now, not near to its reality because God's incomprehensible. But even if your mind boggles over that right now, you don't and you can't really explain it. That's OK. And you know, the Bible teaches it, and that's where we always begin. And then as you grow in godliness, you then will grow in your grasp of it as well. It's interesting, of course, we looked last week at Deuteronomy 6, 4, that God is one. And in that, we asserted he's the true God, and he is different than apart from all false gods as the true and living God. But the reason I read 1 Corinthians 8 And as God is contrasted to idols, it says God is one. Did you notice that? And then it says the Father and the Son. And so even as Paul asserts the unity, the oneness of God, he asserts the Trinity. In verse 6, there is but one God. over against idols. There's but one God, he says, of the one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. What are some other verses that would teach the Trinity? Okay. and there's teaching his deity, but passages that put it all together for us. All right. The early church, again, as I was a teenager, you know, as they started wrestling with these things, they reached wrong conclusions at times. There was error. But there were two passages of scripture where they camped. And one was the Great Commission. What do you think the other one was? You heard it today. Apostolic benediction. So the benediction, love, grace, fellowship from these three persons. the Great Commission, baptizing in the name singular of these three persons. That's both the blessing in the name of the three persons, baptism in the singular name of the three persons. So as the church began to hammer and look at other scriptures and realize that this is a doctrine that we must also arrive at from what we call good and necessary inference, that if the Bible teaches that God is one, But then the Bible teaches that Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God, then the conclusion is there's one God in three persons. Now there is, and those of you who were here when Taylor King preached a few weeks ago, there is the text in 1 John 5 that, you know, initially it was said that Erasmus got that from Latin or something and put it into Greek. Since then, there's been some discovery of some ancient text. I'm not as negative on that text now as I was initially. I'm not yet convinced it was there as we find it in the Authorized Version. But that's the verse that says there's three that testify, and it mentions the three persons of the Godhead. And clearly the Bible teaches that, and so there's no error in it if you have it in your King James Bible. So I'm going to read that verse from the King James Bible to us, please, author. What's it about? So that's a clear truth. And so whether or not it is in the text of Scripture is the clear teaching of Scripture. And I think I mentioned to you last two weeks ago that we will have in our Bibles textual differences, but none of them teach anything that's not true. And that would be a good example of that truth. Now it's important as well that we note what is said with respect to their equality, when we read that they are of the same substance, equal in power and glory. So today there is a controversy called the eternal subordination of the Son. And this actually came from very reputable exegetes such as Wayne Grudem and some others that teach at Southern Seminary. Our own George Knight initially kind of went this direction. So this was in the biblical manhood womanhood book. And in order to assert complementarianism, They took 1 Corinthians 11.3 and asserted that the son was in subordination to the father. So, as Paul lays out male headship, I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. So building on this, they then taught that the father-son relationship involved a subordination. And since the son has eternally been the son, at least in this area, has been the subordination of the son to the father. Now, that in the first place is not what this verse teaches. And how do I know that? It's really pretty simple. So some of you are going to get it. The Father is the head of whom? God is the head of whom? What does it say? Go back to the scripture. Christ. So he says that God is the head of Christ. Now it's true we're talking about God the Father here. Remember, any time that the title God's used and one or other members of the Godhead are mentioned there, that yes, we're talking about the Father. But does it say that the Father is the head of the Son? What does it say? When did Christ come into being? Is He eternal? In the Incarnation? No, in the Incarnation. See, that's the error we've all made. I mean, you're not alone. So that's a title that he actually would receive as the incarnate Messiah at his anointing when he was baptized and the Spirit comes upon him and God declares, this is my beloved son, and him I will please. That is the beloved God-man incarnate who's been appointed to the office. He was not the Christ in eternity. He was a second person of the Godhead in eternity. And so it's a very clear error there, plus it goes against any idea then of Scripture and of the declaration of the Trinity. So it's important that we assert that He is the same in substance, and they are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. So of Christ, or of God the Son, we see this, for example, in Matthew 11, 27. What does that say? It was one for you to look up. Is any subordination in that claim? No. They had equal knowledge. I doubt if any of my students will ever remember anything I've ever said in the seminary, but I will always remember a lecture that Palmer Robertson gave on this verse of Scripture, where he asserted the omniscience of God the Son. All right, we see the same thing about the Holy Spirit. I read this this morning, so it's not in your notes, but you need to add it there. 1 Corinthians 2, 11 and 12. We get lost in the weeds here, and we miss this, for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God." There we see the Spirit of God knowing the mind of God in a perfect equality. So there is no such thing as eternal subordination. So when we say they're the same in substance, what we're saying there is that they all are of one divine being. The substance is not divided. We're not talking about three gods, we're talking about, as we said earlier, one divine being. who then exist in three persons, but they are the same in substance and they are equal in power and glory. Now when we talk about their persons, the catechism then goes on to say with respect to them, there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one true, eternal God, the same as the Equal in Power and Glory, although distinguished in their personal properties." Now, what the Catechism often does, it just simply links. So you come to this, now what in the world is meant by personal properties? Well, you just keep going. What are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead? And here we get that which is unique about each one. So we all would have a personal properties in terms of who we are and whatever. So these three persons, it's proper. So you're getting properties. You got an older word. It's proper for the father to beget the son and to the son to be begotten of the father and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the father and the son from all eternity. Do not these properties, the language that we use, doesn't that imply subordination? Good. To have begotten something, to have something proceeding from me. Good question. That's exactly where I was going. That's remarkable teaching when you asked it. So does that imply subordination? Well, if you look at the language, at the very last prepositional phrase, from all eternity. This is something that God is, and it's not something that He ever became. So the Son, not at some point, was begotten to be the Son. He is the Son eternally begotten, and the Spirit is the Son eternally proceeding. So we compare Scripture with Scripture. When it asserts they're the same in substance, equal in power and glory, then we look at these personal properties, we must interpret them in that way. Now, we'll get a little deeper here. In the Nicene Creed, which was written to assert the deity of the Father, of the Spirit, and the Christ, it says there that the, yeah, I'll read that for us please, that section there, Cabot, you've got it. It's before the confession, yeah. Well, I think we won't read all of it. We'll read... Okay, and then go to the Spirit. Okay, now there's been two ways that this language has been understood. Neither one argues against the equality. The first one, though, could be more questionable. So the first is that this means that the Son has eternally received His entire being from the Father, His Son, and the Spirit is eternally preceded from the Father and the Son. That's pretty the traditional understanding, probably what some of you believe. Calvin, And because he said this, he got in trouble, accused of being an Arian. He said, no, it's only their personal properties. This would answer your question more clearly. So it's not his being. In other words, assert the aseity, we used that word last week, God's independent self-existence, the aseity of all three persons of the Godhead. So what was begotten was not the being, but the personal property. So the Son received His property of Sonship, Person, His Person, not His Deity, His Person of Son, eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit received His eternally proceeding from the Father through the Son. And so it is their personal property or their personage within the Godhead. So God is God and all three of them are equally God. They all are self-existent and self-dependent one God. But eternally, the son received being son by begotten of the father and the spirit proceeding from the father. Very helpful in question, tend to read it as it's actually written. It doesn't say that it's proper for the Father, proper for the Son. It is proper to the Father. Very good. Proper to the Son. Meaning that that's for our benefit we use this language. We see it and describe it, but inherently they are equal. Great. Good point. All right. Now this is important for us, though, because as we read in 1 Corinthians 8, the personal property is manifested in what I'm gonna, another term, remember now, we're gonna learn four things about God, his being, his persons, his, what's next? His decree and his execution of his decree. I knew I had it there. So, all right. So, The economic trinity is how God, so another Latin, ad intra, A-D-I-N-T-R-A. That's who God is in himself and what he does. That takes us through the decree of God. Ad extra has to do within the works of God, creation and providence, by which he does his decree. So the economic trinity is the trinity at work. add an extra. And that's what we had in 1 Corinthians 8, where the Spirit is so often assumed because of His role, but you'll notice that there's one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him. One Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. And so we put it together as things are from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. So as the Father is the head personally, he's the first person of the Godhead. To him, we ascribe the work of fortunation. Now, because God is one, all three persons participate in any act of God. But the distinctive personal property of the father is first, he is the planner or the decreer. The son then is the accomplisher. And it's by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, you just take the two great works of God, which are creation and providence or redemption. And you see this. So God created. And there we have God, the father ordering the creation. God the Son was the Word, as we're told in John 1, through whom all things were created. God the Spirit is the power holding it together, Genesis 1-2. And so that is God at work. That's why these personal properties are very important for us as Christians to grasp. Because now we come to redemption. Who chose you? According to scripture. Blessed be the Father. All right. Who is your Redeemer? Jesus. And by whom do you come to the Redeemer? Spirit. So the exact parallel with creation is redemption, and thus helps us order our praise, our confidence as we live in the presence of God, that we're mindful of the sovereignty of God exercised in these various ways, and it brings us great comfort and security. So in anything that takes place, we know it's ordered by the decree of God. And our savior is the prophet, priest and king who is overseeing us through everything. And the spirit then is the comforter. So you see, this is not some vague abstraction. It is personal Christianity to understand the Trinity and the personal properties. That's very important that the father begets and is of none begotten. I think the confession puts it both ways. And so this is why God the Father was not incarnate. God the Son is begotten, and so God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son to save us. The Son is the fit God incarnate. The Spirit is not the one incarnate because he's the one who equips and empowers the incarnate Savior. It also helps us then to learn how to pray. This is why most often We address our prayers to the Father as the head of the Trinity. And so that's what we're taught in the Lord's Prayer, right? Our Father, who art in heaven. But when it particularly petition has to do with the work of one of the persons, then we may address the person according to that work. So we'll see if anybody was paying attention. The prayer of illumination to whom did I address the prayer? The Spirit. Very good. The Spirit. Because of 1 Corinthians 2 that we went on to read now, because that is His work to illumine our understanding and to disclose the mind of God to us through Scripture. I could have addressed it to Christ, who is our prophet, who by His Word and Spirit reveals the will of God to us for our salvation, but because I had that particular passage of Scripture in mind, then I addressed the prayer to the Spirit. So normally to the Father, But we want to emphasize, either in praise and thanksgiving or petition, the work of one or the other, we may address them. But primarily, our prayers are addressed to the Father. So again, the Trinity is practical Christianity. So regardless of, at this point, where your mind hits the ceiling, that doesn't matter. We all can embrace this, that the Trinity is practical Christianity. Any questions or comments on that? Yes ma'am. So when would you pray to Jesus? Pray to Jesus if we're praying for the church, his headship in the church, his execution against his enemies, because he comes forth with that sword in his mouth in Revelation 19. Any of his offices, we pray unto him as prophet, priest, or king. So as we could address him as prophet, Lord Jesus, we ask that now by your word and spirit you'll reveal your Maybe I'll do that next week, so we'll keep that in mind. I just want to make sure I heard this correctly. That Christ, that the incarnation, His incarnate form is subordinate to God. Yes. But as soon as He's not incarnate anymore, Right. Well, thank you. I'm glad you asked that question. It's something we should use. So, when the JWs at your door, or the Mormons, and they go to these passages of Christ submitting to the Father, you say, well, of course, he came to do the will of the Father to purchase the salvation of his people. We're not talking about the second person that God had in isolation from his incarnation. So thank you for asking, that's very important, so yes. Now, the Lutherans called it the extra-Calvinistica, and you're getting some Latin today, but I think that's okay. The extra part of Calvinism. So they wanted Christ in his human form to have divine attributes. And we've pushed back and said, no, that's not possible. Again, I won't give you the Latin, but the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. But we then asserted that He never quit being the second person of the Godhead. The Trinity didn't cease to be the Trinity. This is one of the great mysteries of the Incarnation, and I can state it. That's all I can do. I can state it. That God the Son's personal manifestation is now in an incarnate form. His eternal deity, He's still second person of the Godhead, and He has all of the attributes of the Triune God. So he's omniscient as second person of the Godhead, as God incarnate, he's not omniscient. So he puts those aside while he keeps walking around? No, no he didn't. Only the glory of recognition. He put nothing aside in terms of his attributes, he simply didn't exercise them as the God in his divine nature. But He's still incarnate, right? Yes, that's what I said. He's still incarnate. This is going to be forever the personal manifestation of God the Son, just as God the Father in Revelation 4 is personally manifested on a throne in His glory. But meanwhile, the Godhead that upholds all things and does all things, God the Son, God the Father, God the Spirit, will no longer be a trinity, it'll be a bi-unity. So if you follow that, it's very important that he never gave up his place as the eternal son of God, and he continued, as the babe in the manger, the second person that God had, he's upholding all things. But he humbled himself to take to himself a human nature, and that's how he revealed himself. And one other thing, a little church history, and that is our Nicene Creed says the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The initial simply said the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Charlemagne and his theologians were one of the first to add the praise and the Son. In the 11th century, the Western Church adopted this language that we have, and that caused the great scissor between the Eastern Church and the Western Church. The Eastern Church said, you don't have a right to edit an ecumenical creed that was adopted by the East and the West. And Rome said, of course we do. And when I say Rome, the West. Now theologically, it is important. to understand this relationship. And so, because the Spirit comes as the Spirit of Christ, and He now is the executioner of the work of Christ for us, and so I think it's theologically important to keep that language as well. My brain hurt a lot less when I realized I didn't have to comprehend this, I had to apprehend it. That's right. and confess it. Maybe if you don't want to apprehend it, just confess it. And leave room for mystery. Yes. Because you didn't come prepared. All right, now the evidence of the... Yes, Kevin. You would not say Christ is subordinate to the Father in this world, would you? He has handed the kingdom... Well, no. Right now, in his exaltation, I would say from Hebrews 2... I mean, Philippians 2, No, not, and he has accomplished the will of a father, so he is now glorified and given the name which is above every name. Right, good question. He's still incarnate, so he's still officially subordinated. That's why he intercedes. Yeah, in his office. It's an official subordination, not an essential one. And I don't know if I agree with my co-pastor on that, so we'll have to wrestle with that one. I disagree with Perkins. Perkins is wrong once or twice. There's a good paper on that coming out, this issue of the Confessional Presbyterian. That one was going to come out six months ago? Good, I look forward to that. So that is one of those questions that is Does Hebrews, in his office, is he still, because he's going to hand the kingdom over, as I started to say, to the father at the end of the age, and will change a relationship. He's still going to be the mediatorial king. So that might change at that point. Eternally is the Son and the Spirit. Ever how we put that. Yeah, I mean, it's for us to grasp that idea. But we do have to wrestle with the biblical word begotten and proceed. So we're not inventing the language of the personal properties. No, no, I just meant that the word received, when you use that, that they received, always were. What the time when it was received, that's the ability to comprehend or not helpfully distinguish. I can't hear half of what you're saying. I was talking more about when you said the son received, and there was a point in time where it actually... He received his incarnate position. That's what I was talking about. Not his sonship. He eternally is the son. Sam? I'm probably the one that misstated himself, not you. I've always found it very challenging to conceive of the person as proper to the persons to do what is proper to them. The Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Yet we have to conceive of all of this as occurring from eternal perfection and not having eternal consequence. There is perfection without consequence. Eternally perfect. Yeah, the Godhead has not changed, is what you're saying. No, that's what we say is eternally begotten, eternally proceeding. And that's the very last preposition in the question and answer. Alright, this last little exercise, and then we'll simply be a whole week behind, that's fine. I noticed in the calendar we've got about three or four extra weeks in the year. But I want you all to do this, because it's great when these people come to your door. And this really is what we have in Archdiocesan 11 has been the classic proof of the deity of the Son and the Spirit. How does it appear that the Son and the Holy Ghost are God equal with the Father? The Scriptures manifest the Son and the Holy Ghost are equal with the Father. Ascribe me to them four things. Now, what are the four things? Attributes, works. Names, attributes, works, and worship. All right, so you got the little chart, and I hope you filled it in. So, names, the son. What are some divine names given to him? Lord of hosts. All right, Lord of hosts, where? Isaias. All right. King. Say again? King. King? Same place. All right. Are you going to works then? Or titles? Where are you? Still a name, okay. Ah, okay. So, obviously, John 1-1, The beginning was the Word, the Word was God, and the Word was God. Isaiah 6, 3-8 is quoted then by the Apostle John, who said, he said this when he saw the Lord. What, how about the Holy Spirit? All right? You really want ones that are going to be more right to the point. I mean, eternal life, yes, but if you're arguing with these, for you, it's great. But if you're going to argue with these people, you need really bold, flat statements. Spirit of God, 1 Corinthians 2, you mentioned that. All right, 1 Corinthians 2. Also, the most subtle one, but it's been used throughout history, is in Acts 5, 3-4. where we're told that Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Spirit, and then a parallel says you lied to God. That has been one of the first places the Church has gone. Attributes. The Son. The Eternal. All right. Isaiah 9, 6, John 1, 1. How about the Holy Spirit? Genesis 2, 11, omniscience. Yeah, we just dealt with his omniscience. Work. Eternal, Galatians 1. Galatians 1, yes. Genesis 1, 1. He was there at the beginning. Right. And that brings us to work for the Spirit. Genesis 1, 2. Colossians. Colossians, 1 Corinthians 2 again. For the Son, the Bible's full of Colossians 1, 16, John 1, 3. Worship. where we started an hour, 45 minutes ago. Great commission, apostolic benediction. These were acts of worship. Remember, when a lesser figure bowed, John bowed before him, it was a violation of the first commandment. So for these people to receive, beings to receive worship, persons to receive worship, asserts their deity. So it's a great little graph to memorize some scripture for each of those, and be prepared then to get in conversation. Is it beneficial to use the transfiguration and the baptism when the three are in action at one time? Yes, thank you. We should have done that earlier. And talking about the three persons, the baptism of Christ is a place where we see all three persons involved in the same act. So the Son is being baptized, the Spirit comes upon him in some visible form so people will recognize what's happening, and the Father speaks from heaven. on the transfiguration, we at least have the Father and the Son as distinct persons as well. So thank you, because there's clear proof that they're distinct persons as well. Any other comments, questions? Yes? One thing I've asked before of the JWs is what is their baptismal form? And they answer, they actually use Well, the Mormons do as well. Yeah. It was... Arthur? Well, the mortal, like, human's relation of father to son and son subordinate to the father is a God-instituted thing, yes. So if we're not to understand the Son as supportive to the Father and the Godhead, why is that language used? You want to answer that? It's an analogy, a metaphor, and the thing to bear in mind is the relationship between God, the Father, and God. The Son is primary to our affiliation, so human affiliation. And divine affiliation and human affiliation, though we speak in terms of analogy and metaphor, are utterly unlike one another in terms of this question of subordination. And so that's just, that's the language God has given to us to understand. Well, but I think he's asking in terms of in the incarnation. No, I think he's talking about the eternal relation that we got to together. Oh, that's all you were asking? I did say that earlier as well, that this is merely the figure to understand a relationship, but we cannot carry it over, because that's what they do. Let's say because a son is subordinate to his father, that obviously the son internally was subordinate to the father. So much false teaching is also based in reversing the argument from greater to lesser by analogy cannot be made from lesser to greater by analogy. It will fall apart much sooner. And it's not the only image or metaphor that's given to describe that relationship. There's also word and light and other Right, but the Catechism is focusing on the personal properties. So we can explain them by other metaphors, but we need to understand here the personal properties in terms of your question. Everything with God is equivocal in His revelation and analogical with us. So we cannot go back and say, well, because we have this, He must. Because we're in His image, we can understand analogically what God is revealing to us, but not equivocally. There's a portion of it where parents are also vindicated, because many times we say, because I said so. In some of this, we have to take that God said so, and we have to understand that. Other questions Very good. Silas, would you please close in prayer? reflect on the 22-year-old and pray that we would dwell on the Trinity and the truths found within, that we would not see it as an abstract, distant truth, but that it would apply to our lives and to our practicing of our faith.