Well, good morning. Good, it's on. Glad to hear it, even if I can't hear it. Does that make sense? Of course not. Alright, we're continuing our discussion of the Trinity and our broader perspective of the doctrine of God. And as I was uploading last week's today, I noticed that this one today will be the 21st one on this broader series of the attributes of God. That's a lot. And I'm sorry that I've given you such a massive fire hose of info. So it's kind of a I'm sorry, not sorry type thing. And I'm also sorry that, in a certain sense, I know much of this goes over our heads. It does. And we like to think of ourselves as modern and smart. You know, the guys that came up with this stuff, they really make us look foolish. And they barely had the wheel. Much less what we have today. But all right, just a bit of a review. We're talking about things today that kind of led up to and also further discussion, at least to a small degree, of the Council of Nicaea, because it was crucial. Just a quick review. Last week, we talked about some of the Trinitarian heresies. Who remembers Gnosticism? You get it? Get it? Don't know. The root word for Gnosticism is a Greek word for to know or knowledge. So it's this idea that you have to have this special insight and that knowledge is what saves you. Key characteristics of Gnosticism. Material things are bad. What's good? The spiritual. And so, what did that mean for Christ? He wasn't crucified. That's one possibility, is that he wasn't really crucified. Another possibility for those one branch of Gnosticism, he didn't really have a real body. He only appeared to. That's sort of a subset called docetism, D-O-C-E-T-I-S-M. So those are a couple possibilities. You remember the Marcionites, Marcionism. What was Marcion's deal? Good God, bad God. Yeah, you had a good God and a bad God. He was like the Gnostics in that the material was bad, spiritual was good, and Yahweh in the Old Testament, he was bad because he made things, like real stuff. But the real God that is over him really wanted a spiritual world. Marcion also gutted the Bible, kept the Gospel of Luke, most but not all of the pastoral epistles, and of course he jettisoned the Old Testament. Kind of like Andy Stanley today. Yeah, right. Mostly ignores it. Yeah. Scissors in his day or you know some sort of knife for us. It's like the black sharpie to cover a hole up Yeah, which why he kept as many of Paul's epistles as he did is remarkable but You're right. I mean anything that referred to that you cut I'm thinking about something else yeah yeah correct They put their finger in the wind. Which way is the wind blowing? And that's where they go. Sibelianism. Who remembers what this was? Modalism, which is? Heresy. Well, it is heresy, but. Different modes? Yeah. So in creation, God was the father. In redemption, God was the son. And in regeneration and salvation applied, if you will, God was the spirit or is the spirit. He's not all three at once. Sometimes he's the father, sometimes he's the son, sometimes he's the spirit. Except that one time. Except that one time. All right, Arianism, the focus here on Arianism was about Christ, but what about Christ? That he was created. A creature, a supreme creature, but a creature nonetheless. All right, here are a couple of others. And we're not going to spend a whole lot of time on these. I'll just give descriptions. Tritheism. This one probably makes sense to you given the name. Each of the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct divine beings. They're each their own distinctive god. So polytheism. Yeah, it is polytheism. There were the Ebionites, or Ebionites, depending who you ask, E-B-I-O-N-I-T-I-S-M, Ebionitism. Jesus was endowed with particular charismatic gifts, and that's kind of broader than what we think of here in Tulsa, but he was still just a human figure. Now, that differs somewhat from Arianism, because at least Arius did attempt to give some kind of divinity to what we call the second person. Even though he was a creature in Arius' eyes, there was still something of a divinity given to Jesus, not with the Ebionites. There is Macedonianism. Were the Ebionites also into Self-denial. I think so. I think they dealt with a lot of asceticism and the like. Macedonianism is like Arianism in that the Holy Spirit is a created being. You don't hear much of that. So if you run across anything, even in today, I'm sure it's out there about the Holy Spirit being created. That's Macedonianism. That's a good question. I didn't look that up. Yeah. That I don't know. There's adoptionism. Think of what the name is. And who do you think in the scheme of this was adopted? Jesus was adopted He became the son by adoption That's right Yeah, so Jesus was born human, but later was adopted by God the Father either, and this depends on which direction you go, either at his baptism or at the resurrection. Now, not excusing this, but with respect to the resurrection, Paul mentioned something like this in Romans. where by virtue of the resurrection, he's declared to be the son of God with power. So at least to give the tiniest little bit of credit, they at least try to get something biblical out of this. they just still picked and choose and failed to see the distinction of God the Son as he is in his essence versus God the Son incarnate. And that's much of the struggle. But the birth narrative and the baptism both. Oh, of course. Declare Jesus is the Son of God. That's correct. Before the resurrection, that's right. And then the last one that I want to mention and this one By implication is extremely popular today and Usually it is popular because people don't really think carefully I'm just gonna say it and this might kind of run some tires over you and Because you may have done some of this yourself. And I get it. I understand. So just want to put that out there. This one's going to kind of, it may hit you in the gut. This one's known as partialism. And you're like, well, I don't even know what that is. So I never did it. Yeah, I'm going to guess that you did. Partialism is the idea that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are components or parts, hence partialism, of one God. Each is a part of God. Now you might be thinking, well I never really did that. Anybody ever use the analogy of the clover? Or the egg? Or water? or the rope with three strands tied together, or the bicycle wheel? That was all before I was baptized, so it doesn't count. Right, right. So if you've used those analogies, guess what? Without meaning to, you've kind of expressed partialism. And this is why you hear me say, time and again, It drives me nuts and I will just stop people. I like to think of God like, stop, just don't. Don't, just forget it. Yeah, but I want to explain it to my kids. One God, three persons. The kids don't understand that though. That's okay, neither do I. It's okay not to understand everything. That shows your kid's humility. Yeah, they may walk away frustrated, but as they get older, they'll remember that you were humble enough to admit, I don't understand, but I believe it to be true. So all your analogies, please, just crumple them up, throw them away. Just don't. Maybe you work with some Muslims, and they say, well, you worship three gods. You say, well, no, I don't. It's the same idea. The question is whether or not they're going to believe it. And the interesting thing is that there's not, I don't want to go off too much on a tangent here, but especially in the early Middle Ages, it was interesting to note some correlation between Islam of the day, as it was growing and which ultimately resulted in the Crusades, and Aristotle. It's kind of interesting that there are certain parallels that Muslim scholars, as they were invading Europe, eventually took to Aristotle. Now, I'm not a philosopher, nor am I a historian. But as I was learning through church history some of that, I just found it interesting that there were certain things adopted from Aristotle. But be that as it may, the degree to which they understand the difference between essence and substance, which we'll talk about more next week as we unpack some of these things, and person. That's part of it. The fact of the matter is even our learned scholars can't fully grasp this. And what Muslims, and it's not just Muslims, any atheist so-called will say the same thing. How is this not three gods? That's part of the frustration. We understand that argument, but all we can do is just simply explain it and also be willing to explain that even our most learned scholars don't fully grasp it. It's just, this is the terminology that best fits the data of scripture. And it took time to develop. Right. And so it falls into the category, which is interesting because Muslims will say that Allah is transcendent and nobody can really understand him. They'll go that far. But it's like we talked about last week. People just want to make God in their image so that we can somehow understand him. What God has revealed to us, That's what we can try to understand. And even that is hard. We've got anthropomorphisms, right? Remember what anthropomorphisms are? Human qualities describing God. Now, as a term, anthropomorphism, we can use that even in just generic literature. You know, the hands of a tree, for instance. Well, trees don't have hands. You know, that kind of thing. But typically, in Christian circles, we deal with that with respect to God. The hand of God, the finger of God that gave us the Ten Commandments. God doesn't have a finger. He's a spirit. As the children's catechism says, has no body as we do. All right. In the time remaining, And there's no way I'll do justice to this. But I want to talk about some of the early Trinitarian proponents that sort of helped lead into the Council of Nicaea in 325. Now, some of these guys died well before the Council of Nicaea. But their influence helped begin to pave the way for what we have in Nicaea and then also after Nicaea with Augustine. And we'll talk about Augustine down the road because he's a little bit later. Now, first of all, the Jews in Jesus's day, with respect to God, their concern, of course, was, in the midst of a pluralistic society around them, under the Roman Empire and under Greek influence, is to preserve that God is one. And that's great. That desire, of course, spilled into the ancient church. There's one God. And so that became a stress early on, especially with the broader church that was outside of Judea and in what you might call geographically pagan territory. Just think, Paul in Athens, what did he see there? All these idols to all these gods, and even one to an unknown god, just in case they missed one. So there's that legitimate concern, there is one god, and he is one. But the misuse of this, or the overemphasis, of course, led some to ruling out any kind of personal distinctions within the Godhead. And so you end up with Sabellianism. You end up with Marcion. You end up with Adoptionism. And these are ancient heresies that are still with us. Others failed to do any justice whatsoever to the essential, and remember that key word, essential. I'm not talking about basic, but substance. The substance of the deity of the second and third persons of the Trinity. Let's talk a little bit about a couple of guys. First was, I mentioned last week, Tertullian. Tertullian lived from about 160 AD to 220. So he died 100 years before the Council of Nicaea. He was from Carthage. And Tertullian was one of the first to give us an extensive Christian library, if you will, in Latin. The movement toward Latin in ecclesial writings really kind of started with Tertullian. Now, Tertullian, as far as we know, based on what we have in terms of records and writings, Tertullian was the first one to use the term Trinity. Now, maybe he heard it somewhere else. Who knows? Back then, giving credit wasn't as important as it is today. Gotta footnote everything. By the way, you guys that are in college or moving on to college, let me warn you, plagiarism can be something unintentional. cite your sources carefully. It is better to err on the side of caution. You could be unintentional and it can still be counted as plagiarism. So that's my warning to you. This is kind of fresh in my mind because it's a bit of a problem even in our reformed circles. And I'm not even talking in academia reform circles and seminaries. It is a problem. But it's also a problem with people that are lifting sermons. And you think, forgive the soapbox here for a moment. You would think in today's day and age, where you can take an iPhone, like I'm doing now, and record the whole thing. You think people aren't going to find out? So there's also, and maybe you know this, there's plagiarism software out there. And so they can take your document, feed it into the plagiarism software, and see to what degree you may have plagiarized. So I'm letting you know this now. Be forewarned. If it's not your work, be prepared to be flipping burgers. OK? Nothing wrong with flipping burgers. I like a good burger. But that's right. And so I think you understand the euphemism there. So whether or not Tertullian got the term Trinity from somebody else, I don't know. Our records indicate he was the first one to use it. Nevertheless, because of when he lived, his own doctrine and formulation of the Trinity was still deficient. And as such, it involved an unwarranted subordinationism. That is, that the son was subordinate to the father. Now, in substance, he went too far. And I don't want to say, and even that, we need to be careful because when you read the early church fathers like Tertullian and Origen, who we'll talk about afterwards, you read some of their stuff, it's like, wow, they had some good insight. But other stuff you read, it's like, what? What is this? This is weird. That's because those doctrines, some of those doctrines just simply did not develop yet. They were pioneers in thinking of certain areas. And so we need to cut them some slack and recognize that sometimes they use terms and words and ideas in ways that we would never use today. It's a different culture. So cut them a little slack. A little. All right, Origen. Origen lived from 183 to 253. So again, he died about 75 years before the Council of Nicaea. He was born in Alexandria and spent about the first half of his career in Alexandria. He died in Tyre of Lebanon, so he traveled. Origin is where we get Roman Catholicism's kind of fourfold way of understanding scripture. Maybe you've heard some of that. I'll let you look it up. It is kind of bizarre. Now, with respect to the Trinity, Origen went even further than Tertullian in that he taught explicitly, he was much more explicit, that the son is subordinate to the father in respect to his essence. So Origen did kind of get into some trouble there. And so others who were like this, and unfortunately, that was the kind of thing that led to Aryanism. And that's unfortunate. Was Origen also the fellow who made himself a eunuch? I think so. I could be wrong, but I think so. I'm thinking about all these people, yeah yeah yeah right Yeah, they do that's true Yeah origin actually also said that the Holy Holy Spirit is subordinate in terms of his essence and even to the Sun in terms of essence Yeah Similar the idea that the the son is subordinate to the father in essence in his substance in terms of what God is So we understand the language of subordination ism that the father that the son Submits to the father we we get that that's in Scripture. I but that's in terms of His incarnation. So God the Son submitted to God the Father according to His human nature. And so that's different than God as He is. And I understand that's like, you know, that's up here, trying to figure that out. But it's really the best and only way to understand it. This is why we can use the language that God died. See I I was taking it that's what he was saying, but From what I can gather and what everyone's telling me that's not what Wayne is saying Wayne is saying that what origin in intertolianism. Right. Right. Speaking of Wayne Grudem, whose own systematic theology tends to be popular among Calvinists, what Wayne Grudem and a couple others have been doing is promoting this idea, not for its own sake, this idea of the son being subordinate to the father. But they promote it because of the relationship that is supposed to be between husband and wife. So they're trying to make a practical application and using something that they really shouldn't to do it. They're right in what they're saying of what the relationship of a husband and wife ought to be. But they're applying a wrong doctrine to make that point. A wrong doctrine of God. Now, when we get a little bit further into the Christology side of this, we'll break this down a bit more. Like I said, with both Tertullian and also with Origen, their way of thinking, this subordinationism as it were, detracted from the essential deity. Remember, essential, that's a key word. It's not like how we use it today. Of the other two persons of the Godhead. That's the result. And that becomes the nice springboard for Arianism. Now, in order to get even the glimpse or a handle of the Council of Nicaea, we need to talk a bit about Constantine. Who was Constantine? Emperor please don't tell me it's like a movie. I know there's a movie about that called Constantine I have no idea what it's about. I don't even care has nothing to do with Emperor Constantine At least I don't think because I've never seen it That's the key aspect is his legalization and I later promotion of Christianity. Constantine ruled from 306 until he died in 337. Now at the time, the empire in many respects was starting to fall apart. And so to make it a bit easier to manage, they kind of divided it up. Somewhat unofficially, officially. Still one empire, but just kind of divided. At first, Constantine ruled in the West. Eventually, he ruled the whole thing. Now, Constantine, one positive, if you will, with him is that he really did have an uncanny ability of political foresight. He could really get a sense of the direction things were going. And at the time, while Christianity as a whole was still a minority, it was becoming a pretty significant minority. And there's a certain sense, and I'm being simplistic, so don't, don't, over stress this, but there's a certain sense where Constantine saw this, recognized this. And supposedly, Constantine converted in 312. Now, of course, since then, people have questioned whether or not his conversion was legit, whether it was an expedient thing or a political thing on his part. Sorry, but I can't read hearts 1,700 years into the past, so, you know, I don't know what to tell you. with respect to that. So at least outwardly, he professed Christianity and became a Christian in 312 AD. This eventually led, in 313, to the Edict of Milan, which is what, as Tamer said, made Christianity a legitimate religion in the Roman Empire. It didn't make it the religion. It made it legitimate. We need to make that distinction. It became accepted. Up to that point, it wasn't. And so what that did, it enabled the elimination of any systemic persecution. Specifically by the state. Now, persecution kept happening, that's for certain. But it wasn't legal. But it wasn't legal anymore, technically, right. It's not legal today, technically. But it happens. So, he's the one who made Christianity a legit religion within the empire, Edict of Milan 313, just after his conversion. That gives you a little bit of background. That's, I mean, broad, brushed, simplistic background. In the meantime, down in Alexandria, in the midst of this, trouble was brewing. And the trouble that was brewing was between the bishop of Alexandria named Alexander, Alexander the Alexandrian Bishop. Okay, say that ten times fast. And Arius. See, we've come back to Arius. Now, the thing about Arius was, with his teachings, Arius was apparently a good preacher in that he was charismatic. He was a good orator. He was likable, charismatic, not in the Tulsa word of faith charismatic sense. Maybe he was, I don't think so. But he gained a following because of that. And let's face it, we understand this, how people take to pulpits and they, by sheer force of personality, gain a following. And you listen to these guys and you're like, man, they know how to speak, but they can't preach worth a hill of beans. But those who are ignorant just get drawn. And I'm not using ignorant in a pejorative sense, just in the true sense of the word. They don't really have the foundations in order to differentiate. You know, as an aside, I grew up with New York Governor Mario Cuomo. You remember Mario Cuomo? Tried to run for president a couple times and so forth. He got multiple terms. And in part, I'm convinced it's because he was a great orator. He really was. And eventually, people caught on. as taxes were just skyrocketing, property taxes. So even other places that were traditionally liberal-minded kind of turned against him. So that's an example. Arius was this kind of charismatic individual, and he gained quite a following. And so opposition came. Conflict in the church came. And in fact, it was pretty bad. Eventually Alexander kicked Arius out or tried to. The short of it is both men appealed to Constantine and as such Constantine then decided to call what we now know as the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea. There had been other smaller regional councils. You might think of it in terms of us, presbyteries. But this was the first universal, as far as universal Christianity was at that point, ecumenical council. And it was to be held in Nicaea. which was not far from what was to become Constantinople. Yeah. Yeah. That was an aspect of why that place was picked. Constantine had enough sense to recognize that if things got bad, it was in a location that could be easily contained. So that's one aspect of it. Now, the thing is, there were anywhere, the estimates are pretty wide in terms of numbers, but it was anywhere from 250 to 318 bishops or delegates that came to the Council of Nicaea. Only five came from the West. And only one or two of those were from Rome. Rome, as a Christian setting and city, had little to no influence at the Council of Nicaea. Tell that to a Roman Catholic, woo! But it's just a fact. They're the ones that have the true church, right? Right, they don't get bogged down in facts, right. Norm? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. A lot of those that did come had, due to the previous persecutions, lasting effects of the persecution, and so cripples. You think about these men traveled. All right, so eventually, at the Council of Nicaea, Arius was eventually shot down. Now, there were others on Arius' side, like Eusebius of Nicodemia, Eusebius of Nicodemia, different from the Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius of Caesarea wrote a kind of biography of Constantine that was a lot of, lots of flattery. So it makes you wonder who really wrote it. Other things that came out of the Council of Nicaea, it's how we come up with Easter for the day. That was an issue. And it took a council to come up with this. There are other issues also regarding God's word. But ultimately, the key thing for our purpose is that came out of the Council of Nicaea are the early stages of what we call the Nicene Creed. Now, you can turn in the back of the Trinity Psalter to the Nicene Creed as we have it. What I want to do is read to you the Nicene Creed as it was adopted in 325. And see if you can follow it. It's toward the back. It's the first of the ecumenical, well, the second of the ecumenical creeds in the back. So if you see the, what's that? 852. Notice the similarities, but then also notice the differences. We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth. who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead and in the Holy Ghost. But those who say, and now you're not going to see anything like this, But those who say there was a time when he was not, and he was not before he was made, and he was made out of nothing, or he is of another substance or essence, or the Son of God is created or changeable or alterable, they are condemned by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Notice that in 325 the original creed had a paragraph Listing a bunch of anathemas on those who said this or those who said that where do you think they got those expressions? from guys like Arius That expression There was a time when he was not. He was before he was not. It's something that Arius championed. It's the idea that God was before the sun was. And you can see as early as 325, this was condemned as heresy outright. And that's what gives us the springboard to what we have as the Nicene Creed. I don't remember, because I remember what the Red Trinity hymnal, which we've got a whole stack of them in the back room there. But you may remember the Nicene Creed as it's found there. It's essentially the same thing. It's still an English translation. But what we have in terms of the Nicene Creed was finally and fully developed and adopted at 451 AD in the Council of Chalcedon. So that's kind of the history of the development so far of our Trinitarian Creed. We're still not quite there because there are some things that still need to shape us a little bit better. And we come to next, the key guys that I wanna talk about next week, if we get to it, I'm weighing the Trinitarian terms. I'll probably talk about the history and then get to the Trinitarian terms. But guys known as the Cappadocian Fathers. You ever heard of them? the two Gregories and Basil, as well as Athanasius. Now, Athanasius was at the Council of Nicaea, but he was kind of just a follower of Alexander at that time. So he was kind of starting out, if you will. And over the course of his ministry, he was kicked out of Alexandria five different times. So if you get a chance, now there are a couple of minor issues here and there, but read Athanasius on the Incarnation. It's remarkable in his day how developed his stuff was. Still a couple of minor issues, and we have the Athanasian Creed in our Trinity Psalter hymnal, which Athanasius probably didn't write. And then we're also going to talk about Augustine you can't talk about the Trinity without talking about Augustine and His work on the Trinity is key. It's very important work So any other last-minute questions or comments that I have no idea how to answer Yeah That's a debate that I am unsure of what the answer is. So that's possible. give we need to give when we're reading that. And then you look at today where people are thrown off and say heretical things. They don't have the same excuse because they don't. I think of often this happens because of the lack of study. They're basically putting themselves in the same position. That's correct. And so in one sense, they want to be given some liberty as they develop this, but the fact is we've lost it. You need to understand what's been fought for before. And that's why, at the end of the day, when you run into people that talk about no creed but Christ. It's still a creed. First of all, that is a creed. You say to them, do you believe that? And they'll say, yeah. Well, good job. You believe a creed. But even apart from that, what you were saying when you say no creed but Christ, you're going back to the beginning, which sounds all noble and spiritual and pious. But that means you're gonna have to start from scratch. And those same people that say no creed but Christ will use the term Trinity. Where did the term come from? Our creeds. So they're inconsistent at best when they do this. Church history is important. I'm telling you this as a former math teacher. Okay? I'm not a historian. You want the details of the history, you can ask my daughter next time she's back in town. She's the historian of the family, not me. I deal with the systemics. That tends to be my focus. But that's just me. That's okay. We're all different. But church history is important to understand where things came from, how they developed, why are we here as we are now. Yeah, God's providential hand on the church for the last 2,000 years. That's something for which we ought to give Him praise. Alright, we are past time, so let's close in prayer.