My lecture is entitled God, Creation, and Interpreting Scripture Texts, which Predicate Creaturely Features to God. So I have in my introduction, I'm going to define what I mean by God, what I mean by creation, and then I'll get to those features. to the substance of the lecture. By God, I am assuming the one living and true God who is, I'll say, of himself, so neither contingent nor dependent, infinite, unbounded in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by creatures, but is comprehended by himself, a most pure spirit, invisible, incorporeal, simple, not made up of parts, impassable, not a patient, upon which agents act, absolutely immortal, absolutely immutable, timelessly, by the way, I have to say absolutely immutable because there's a doctrine of relative immutability going around. So now we have to say absolutely, which is, by the way, you shouldn't have to say absolutely immutable, right? Now we have to, it's like, do you know what the word immutable means? timelessly eternal, we gotta add timeless eternity now to eternity, not standing in need of any creature, not deriving anything from creatures, but manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon creatures, the alone fountain of all being, in whose divine and infinite being there are three subsistences, eternal modes of existence of the singular undivided divine essence, the subsistences being named by scripture, the father, the son, or word, and the Holy Spirit, the subsistences being of one substance, power, and eternity, these subsistences being distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on him." That's what I mean by God. So repeat that after me. What do I mean by creation? That's my working definition of God as we get into the lecture, God, creation and interpreting scripture texts which predicate creaturely features to God. By creation, I am assuming everything not God, or what older theologians called creatures, things produced by God, sustained by God, and moved by God. This includes all angels and all men, all animate and inanimate things, all terrestrial beings, all plants, all things which at some point had no being then were brought out of nothing but God into being, sustained in their being, moved by God's mysterious providence to change and brought by God to their determined end or goal. I take creation, or creatures to signify everything not God, not divine, not full strength eternal, not full strength infinite, not full strength pure act, not full strength simple, not full strength immutable. That's creatures, okay? Now, we read the Bible and it says God has wings, or a hand, or an arm, or that he's a rock. Those are interesting features of Holy Scripture. So let me present the difficulty I'm trying to address today. Sometimes the scriptures predicate creaturely things of God. This happens early in the Old Testament and is continued in the New Testament. Even then God said, you know, that's like a creaturely thing. If read in a literalistic That word's loaded, by the way. I didn't say literal. I said literalistic or literalistical. I like that one even better. If read in a literalistical fashion, God would be different from our confession of God stated above if we read the scriptures wrongly. In fact, God would seem to be either a creature himself, or the features of creatures are actually creations of God reflecting real things in God. Let me show you what I mean. Genesis 1-2, the spirit of God was hovering. You ever wondered about that? What is that? What does that signify? What would that have looked like if, by the way, Moses wasn't sitting there going, wow, slow down, writing. This is Moses after the fact of creation. But the Spirit of God was hovering. Now, hovering sounds kind of like maybe birdly. I'm not sure. Or maybe some sort of pneumatological hovercraft. I'm not sure. some sort of cosmic something or other. So the question from this text is, is the spirit of God, God or not God? Is this signifying a creature or divinity? And what does it mean? You know, work through that. Genesis 1.3 as well. Then God said, Chuck dealt with this earlier. But we might read this in a literalistic fashion and ask the question, God speaks? As in an audible voice pronouncing the words, let there be light. If we were there, would we have heard that? That's not... What's so funny? Oh. Do you remember, we were in Georgia one time, and this big, loud sound occurred, and it was like lightning or whatever, and Mike Ranahan had the microphone, and he said, who wrote Hebrews? Paul wrote Hebrews. Because God tells us in 2 Peter chapter 3 that Paul wrote Hebrews. Anyway. So Genesis, you know, does God speak? I thought you guys were laughing at when I said, you know, God speaks. But I think I told you earlier yesterday that I actually saw a discussion someplace where somebody was trying to say, it was probably Hebrew. And I'm going, I don't think that's what's being signified in those words. Elsewhere in scripture, the word of God is said to have come from the mouth of God, So do we want to read that literalist, like God has, you know, lips and gums and teeth and a tongue? Psalm 8, 3, again, trying to present the difficulty I want to address, Psalm 8, 3 indicates the heavens as the work of God's fingers. You see what our confession in chapter 2 talks about this, I think it's chapter 2, where God manifests himself by creatures to creatures. I think I said that yesterday. Fingers are creatures, but fingers can signify something about God, apparently. But we don't want to read this in a literalistic fashion, space extending fingers. And if fingers, then a hand. And if a hand, then an arm. If an arm, then a shoulder. Right? We're not going to do that. Well, some people might do that. Elsewhere in Scripture, God is said to have both a hand and an arm. Does God have really existing fingers, hands, and arms. Psalm 17.8, another one, predicates wings of God. Hide me under the shadow of your wings. Not hide me under the shadow of your wing, but wings plural, okay? So two divine wings. Wings are not By the way, hands with fingers, right? So God has, apparently, a finger, a hand, an arm, and now wings. God has fingers, a hand, an arm, and at least two wings, if we read this literalistical. By the way, what's that technical term? Ornithomorphism? Is that what it is? Birdly traits attributed to God. There's actually a technical term for that. I think Cam Porter from Canada helped me determine that. How about John 10? It predicates a divine hand of God. And no one shall snatch them out of my hand. A creaturely thing that's teaching us something about God that I'm saying we can't read this literalistically. My father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand." So the son has a hand, the father has a hand. Now we know according to the human nature of our Lord, he has a space-extending hand, even to this day and will forever. Is that what he's talking about? Because if that's what he's talking about with reference to himself, we should ask the question, well, what about the father? Does the father have a similar hand as the son in terms of this human nature? Now, it's one thing for our Lord to claim he has a hand. He did and does, though I don't think he's talking about his human nature here. I don't think he's talking about a space-extending hand connected to his forearm, which is connected to his shoulder, which is connected to his torso. It's another thing for him, however, to claim that the Father has a hand. We can get the humanity of our Lord. Okay, you have a hand. But even with that, no one can snatch him out of my hand. Who's he talking about? I think he's talking about the elect of all ages. Then we have to ask the question, what kind of hand did Jesus have? That's got to be a pretty big hand. So I think these four or five texts present the difficulty that I want to try to address. It's a brief sample of texts in scripture that can cause problems for interpreters. Now I take it that most of you, if not everyone, already knows that only God formed things from things in the Genesis 1 account, and that God doesn't have a mouth with which he speaks. Well, he does, but he doesn't, right? Metaphor, a thing standing for another thing, So we can say God has a mouth, but he doesn't have a mouth. He doesn't have real space-extending fingers, a hand, an arm, or wings. But on the other hand, we can say, no, there are such things as divine wings, metaphorically speaking. The thing itself stands for something that's real, true, and eternal in God. We have to determine what that is. Scripture predicates many creaturely things of God. So how do we account for these and other statements? Creaturely predications occur in Genesis 1. Verse two, verse three, all throughout the account there. So it starts really early in Holy Scripture. It's probably more prevalent in the Old Testament than the New, but even the New does that as well. How do we resolve this? And so I'm gonna quote Turretin, we distinguish. We have to distinguish carefully. We maintain our creator, creature distinction from the beginning. And we take that distinction with us when we interpret other texts. We use our knowledge of God and creatures to help us interpret scripture texts. Our knowledge of God comes from his two books, nature and scripture. Our knowledge of creatures comes from nature and sometimes also from scripture. And let me show you how this works. So let's consider Genesis 1.1. Here we have the initial act of creation ex nihilo rehearsed for us. We have the divine agent, God, in kind of like Nicene, patristic nomenclature. Theologia, God in himself, whether creatures exist or not. We have the divine work created and its effects, the heavens and the earth. economy, oikonomia, the execution of the divine decrees. So if we note in Genesis 1, we have theologia producing oikonomia, God producing creatures, in that order. In the order of knowing, we start with creatures, you know why? Because we are creatures, right? We start with ourselves, and then we go out from there. In the order of knowing, we start with creatures. Ourselves, nature outside of us, scripture. Dr. Renan doesn't want me to say this. The Bible is a creature. Scripture is creature. Scripture is not God. Right? Because you're a numbskull. You don't think deeply like Chuck and I. Because people think that creatures are like creepy crawlers or something, right? Or raccoons. All I mean by that is not God. And if that hasn't been clear enough in the two days I've been lecturing, something's wrong either with me or you. And since we know nothing's wrong with me, it must be with you, James. It's a created thing. It came into existence. Although it reflects eternal things. But anyway, in Genesis 1-1, we have theologia producing oikonomia, God producing creatures, creation. The first verse of the Bible entails this creator-creature distinction in the context of Theologia and oikonomia. By the way, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, right? In the beginning was the Word. John 1 reflects this theologia oikonomia because you have this, well, I think I'm going to actually, oh look at that, it's the next verse, another text to consider. Stick to the notes, Richard, is even more instructive. John 1, 1 through 14. Here we have John 1, 1 and 2. We have theologia there. In the beginning was the word. Do you hear the reverberation? The echo of Genesis 1, 1 right here in John 1. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. So these verses refer readers back of the economy, back of the execution of the divine decree, to its Trinitarian source, here indicated by two persons in transcendent relation without creatures, God and the Word. I take that to be two divine persons here. John 1.3 says this, all things were made, now this is not theologia, God and himself, but the divine economy. This is the making here. Here's creation. All things were made through him, that is the word, and without him nothing was made that was made. These words introduce readers to creation, effected by virtue of God in himself, theologia, though here appropriating creation to the word or son. I don't think we want to read that and say, and I think I mentioned this yesterday, John 1, 3 appropriates creation to the sun. Therefore, the father appointed a deputy, the sun, to do the work of creation, and the father had nothing to do with it. Because John 1, 3 says, all things were made through him. And the him refers back to the word. Therefore, only the word executed divine power in the creation of all things. I hope you don't want to do that. Some people kind of give me the creepies that they actually do that sometimes with some texts and they don't read scripture in a Trinitarian fashion. Should we read the Bible through, Charles, and then go back and read it differently in light of what we learned from it? Wow, what a novel concept. We should take everything that the Bible teaches with us when we read the Bible? I think we need to do that here, or else we're going to run into big problems. Now, these words introduce us to John 1, 3, to the theology, actually, to the oikonomia, the economy, effected by virtue of God in himself. And then in verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So here is the economy, the oikonomia, narrowly considered the incarnation of the word. And the order in this passage is very instructive for reading scripture properly. First, theologia, then oikonomia. First, get God right, or else you won't get the economy right. You're gonna wash the works of God back up into God in se, God in himself. You're gonna make somehow, someway, creation constitutive of the divine being. First God in himself, then God pro nobis, God toward or for us. Its order is not merely to be observed, but it must condition our reading of the entire Gospel of John, and I'm going to argue, it must condition our entire reading of the Holy Scriptures from Genesis through Revelation. What we learn from John about theology and then economy, you can get that in Genesis 1. Because remember I said yesterday, the first words in Genesis 1-1 are a prepositional phrase, which are syntactically subordinate to the verbal idea. So the first word syntactically, in one sense, is actually Elohim. God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. If we don't get this right in the Gospel of John, for example, there's all kinds of potential train wrecks ready to happen. Let's look again at Genesis 1-3. Then God said, let there be light. Without more information, one might conclude that God, whatever or whoever he or it is, must have vocal cords, God said. A larynx, a voice box that he takes in air and it flows over throat organs which end up producing audible sounds that come forth from a mouth producing detectable and understandable words. Let me make a statement for your consideration here. When divine ontology, being, does not inform the divine economy in our interpretive efforts, a theological train wreck is in the making that will end up in the junkyard of heresy. I think that's right. If you get God wrong, you're going to get God's work wrong. So in one sense, what I'm saying, we have to take our theology proper and our Trinitarian theology with us when we read the Bible. What about Genesis 1-3, though? Let there be light. Here's Matthew Poole's 17th century interpretation, and it's a good example of what I'm trying to say. He says this, he commanded, not by such a word or speech as we use, thank you, which agreeth not with the spiritual nature of God. See what he just did? He's interpreting Genesis 1-3, and what's at least part of the lens through which he interprets this? John chapter 4, God is spirit. But either by an act of his powerful will called the word of his power, Hebrews 1-3, or by a substantial word. Ah, now he's bringing, smuggling in a doctrine of at least benedict here, trinity because verse two, but anyway, his son by whom he made the world, Hebrews 1, 2. who is called the word, partly, if not principally for this reason, John. Anyway, just showing you that Poole accounts for the anthropomorphic language of the oikonomia, of the economy, of the execution of the decree, via his theology, his theology proper. An accounting gathered from the Old and New Testaments, right? When I just read that, You're going, okay, Matthew Poole is interpreting Genesis 1-3, and he's using other scriptural passages to help him figure out what this signifies, what this anthropomorphic language signifies. A canonical consultation while doing the exegesis of the third verse of the Bible. Is that okay to do? I forgot the man's name. What is that theory? Not the analogy of faith, but the analogy of subsequent revelation. You ever heard of that? Walter Kaiser. Anybody have Walter Kaiser books? In the early 90s, I started reading a lot of Walter Kaiser books. He doesn't hold to the traditional, I would say, it's not just Reformed or Protestant, classically Christian understanding of the analogy of scripture or the analogy of faith. He holds the analogy of not subsequent but antecedent, the analogy of antecedent revelation. So if we're over here in Psalm 17 or Psalm 8, we can use everything that we know that was written before that, that the author of the Psalm might have had at his disposal. We can't use Jesus. to help us interpret the Old Testament, because the Old Testament writers didn't have it. Now, I don't think he would say it that way, but in essence, that's his position. He got pushback toward an exegetical theology. It's in that book. He got pushback immediately after that book, well, not immediately, but a couple of years after it came out. And I read his response to somebody's pushback, and I'm going, you didn't deal with the issue here. The issue is this, in one sense. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Can I use any part of the Bible written after that to help me interpret that? If I can't, can I use a lexicon created by liberal God-hating Germans in the 19th century to help me interpret these Hebrew words? You put it that way, you go, eh. We need to allow the word of God By the way, sometimes in the Word of God, we have the Word of God on the Word of God. And when you have the Word of God on the Word of God, you've got the Word of God on the Word of God, okay? So that's why sometimes I'll say, how do I know that? God told me. So I think we see this necessity of interpreting scripture by virtue of scripture itself. pool accounts for the works of God, that which God produces, including the use of words in the text of scripture, then God said, by virtue of who the creator is. Okay, so he's interpreting the economy by virtue of divine ontology, divine being, what God is. In other words, theology conditions our interpretation of the economy, not the other way around. In other words, I want another amen, so I'm gonna say this again. It's so important. I mean, I'm preaching through the gospel of John, and I, after a while, I finally listened to my friend Jim Butler. He said, dude, you don't read commentaries chronologically? I said, no. He said, once you do that, you're going to weed out a lot of the modern ones. So I went from like 30 commentaries to like seven by reading them chronologically. And I started noticing, anything good that the modern commentaries say, it's already been said. And there's so much rich theological exegesis in the older ones. And what I started to notice was a lot of the fudging on Trinity and really non-canonic Christology in the Gospel of John commentaries comes from this. They don't do this. Theology, conditions, are interpretation of the economy, not the other way around. Thank you. It is not the case that we should take the words of the economy in a literalistic fashion in order to indicate who and what God is. Our theology proper must condition our interpretation of God in the economy or we'll get in big trouble. Finally, let's consider John chapter 10. I mentioned this as a perplexing text. Oh, I'm good, I'm almost finished. John 10, 28 and 29, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. These are the words of Jesus. If you have a red letter edition, these are red letters. The red letters are pretty important, actually. Whether they're red or black, it doesn't matter, but who is the best exegete of both himself and the Old Testament and the world around him that's ever existed on the face of the earth? It is Jesus, okay? I forgot who it was. I was reading somebody's dissertation on the Christology of a patristic. And I think it was Cyril of Alexandria. And the guy was kind of making the point that the red letters in the, he didn't say it this way, it's the way I read it. The red letters in the gospels are really important because it is the incarnate son of God interpreting himself in light of the extant scriptures of the Old Testament. He doesn't cast new meanings on ancient texts. He basically says, I am that. which the Old Testament promised. And then when you read the Book of Acts and the writings of the New Testament, this, what we're experiencing, is that which the prophet said would take place. So anyway, it's pretty important. These are red letters here. And no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all. That's interesting. There's the eternal subordination of the son right there. That's how some people read that, right? You have to ask the question, what is he talking about? Greater than all what? I think he's talking about creatures. And no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. So let's think through this. If we took the words properly literal, we could then ask this question. How could our Lord's physical hand hold all his sheep in it? Millions? Billions? I don't know. It could not, obviously. And if this did refer to his physical hand, wouldn't that imply that the father has a physical hand and the Mormons would be right? This can't refer to his literal human hand. Or can it? I don't think it can. I think it best to take hand improperly or figuratively indicating power in execution. Listen to Cyril. Hand in scripture means power. Something like that. I might have the quote here. I just love reading Cyril. I told you, I think yesterday, sometimes he'll say, he'll quote somebody and say, this is the absolute stupidest thing that any creature in the image of God has ever said. Hand is power. Therefore, this must be a metaphor. And I think that's the best way to do it. And how do we know it's a metaphor? Well, we're taking our theology proper to this passage, but the word hand is actually used in the Old Testament metaphorically of divine power and execution. So a metaphor is a type of verbal communication which puts one thing, in this case hand, for another thing, in this case power, divine power in execution. Listen to these words from the Old Testament. The Lord saved Israel from Egypt by his mighty hand, according to Exodus 3.20. So I will stretch out my hand, creaturely thing, indicating something about divinity, in once a creation occurs and strike Egypt with all my miracles which I shall do in the midst of it and after that he will let you go and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, Deuteronomy 26.8, that is by his power and execution. If we were there, in Egypt, we wouldn't see some sort of space-extending divine hand coming out of a cloud, you know, protecting the people of God and destroying the enemies of God. This is obviously a figure of speech. The hand of God is a metaphor signifying divine power terminating upon creatures, power going out from God, in quotes, which affects, alters earthly creatures or causes them to be changed in some manner. So our Lord here, knowing well the scriptural metaphor, did Jesus recognize that the Old Testament has metaphor in it depicting creaturely things and predicating those things of divinity? Yeah, he did. Our Lord here, knowing well the scriptural metaphor, claims divine power in preserving his sheep. Then in verse 29, he indicates something about the father. The hand of the father protects and preserves the sheep. The hand of the son and the hand of the father signify one divine power in execution. That's what I think he means when he gets down to verse 30. I and the father are one. By the way, that's very interesting. Two are one. More than one is one. Let us, more than one, make man in our images, image singular. I think it was John Gilbert pointed that out a long time ago to me. You have more than one is one way back in Genesis 1.26. And Jesus does the same thing here, I think, in John 10.30. applying the metaphor of hand, divine power and execution terminating on creatures, namely here his sheep or the elect of, I would say, all the ages. And then when he says, I and the Father are one, I think he's talking about one in substance, one in essence, quiddity, not just one in purpose. I think that's a given. By the way, Calvin on the John 1030. Calvin takes the Jehovah's Witness view on John 1030, unfortunately. He's wrong. I like Calvin, I love Calvin, I just don't always like him, sorry. Hand, then, is a metaphor indicating the execution of divine power Divine power toward and for the sheep. This is really good news. What is that hymn? Never, no, never, no, never forsake. Remember that hymn? That's a great line, and I think part of it might be coming from this John 10 passage. No one shall snatch them out of my hand, but ah, you can jump out of it. You ever heard that one? I think I heard. Chuck Smith, or one of the Calvary Chapel guys in Southern California in the 80s, say something like that. No one can snatch them out, but you can jump out. And I'm going, if I could, I would have. That's not very encouraging. I read John 10, and at least on the surface of it, it sounds like Jesus is trying to be encouraging to somebody. So this is divine power in execution, symbolized, signified, through the metaphor of a creature, hand. God manifests himself to creatures by creatures, by creaturely things. Here, words signifying something. Here's what Augustine says, if by hand By the way, Augustine is the city in Florida, St. Augustine. The patristic giant, Titan, is called Augustine. I learned that from John Gershner, who was actually born in the late fourth century, so, Charles. Augustine says, If by hand we are to understand power, the power of the Father and Son is one, for their Godhead is one. He's doing theology. It is better here by the hand of the Father and Son to understand the power, not the powers, the power of the Father and the Son. Here is the serial quote. Hand in the divine scripture means power. So when you read Cyril, it's like, all right, then I'm going to read Augustine, and I'm going to read Aquinas. Sorry, Thomas Aquinas. And I'm going to read Matthew Poole. And sometimes I read Calvin. And then I'm going to read John Gill. But you just go back to Cyril. It's just so simple. Hand in the divine scripture means power. You see what he does there? He interprets John 10 in light of what he learns from elsewhere in scripture. It's pretty. I think important hermeneutical principle there. Again, our Lord, knowing the scriptural metaphor, uses it to identify himself as one who executes divine power for the benefit of his sheep. The same divine power executed by the Father. Two divine persons executing one divine power. Now, does anybody want to say, well, since Jesus said my hand and the Father's hand, the metaphor that signifies, the metaphor hand, that signifies the execution of divine power only applies to the Father and the Son because he says, I and the Father are one, so the Spirit isn't involved there. On the one hand, I would say, no, the Spirit isn't involved in the words of the text. But if you read the Bible, you have to say, for some reason, Jesus was trying to teach his divinity, the doctrine of his divinity, at this point in John 10, without mentioning the Holy Spirit. Is it okay for him not to mention the Spirit? Do we want to say, I and the Father are one excludes any sort of divine unity between Father, Son, and Spirit? We don't want to say that. Why? Because we're Christians. We read the Bible. We know that sometimes scripture texts can appropriate some sort of divine thing to one person and not the other. And yet, God is not necessarily excluding the other persons. It's OK. And I think that's what's happening what's happening here. So we have two divine persons executing one divine power. That's why it's this consubstantial unity of father and son in John 10 30. And all of this by virtue of a metaphor from a creature, a hand. So a hand in this case is used by God, the son, by the way, speaking according to his human nature, right? with lungs and vocal cords taking in air, changing the shape of his mouth and tongue, causing audible sounds to come out of him, going through, however that happens, and striking ears, right? He's speaking according to his human nature, but is he speaking according to his human nature about his human nature? He's speaking according to his human nature about his divine nature. I and the Father are one. One in substance. This execution of divine power by the hand of the Son, hand of the Father, two divine persons, executing divine power, terminating on weak, sinful sheep who believe that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God. That's pretty good news. Never, no, never, no, never. And if I ask that as a question, never, no, never, no, never, the answer to that is yes, never, no, never, no, never. He'll never forsake us. And this is, I think, wonderful news. Anyway, contemplation. I have, I think, two points really briefly. Interpreting scripture texts which predicate creaturely things of God. Number one, we must distinguish between God and not God. in all of our interpretations of Scripture, right? We gotta distinguish. And when should we start distinguishing? As soon as we open the Bible, right? This is why ancient interpreters said things like this, anything repugnant to God must not be taken literally of God. You ever read anything like that or seen something like that? Why did they say so? I remember when I first started looking into this stuff and I read something like this, anything repugnant to God must not be taken literally of God. And I said, well, where'd you get that from? Sounds like philosophy. But if you read through the Bible This is what you'll conclude, right? Anything repugnant to God must not be taken literally of God. God uses creatures to teach us something of himself, though God is neither a creature nor does he have creaturely features. How else is he gonna teach us about him except through creatures? Second, contemplation. By the way, in my sermons at my church about, I don't know, eight years ago, I stopped doing application. I just call it contemplation. We must take our doctrine of God and Trinity with us while interpreting Holy Scripture. Is that okay, Chuck? We have to do that. I mean, that's why Chuck mentioned the older writers, the pre-modern kind of writers, had no problem seeing adumbrations, faint hints at the doctrine of the Trinity in the Old Testament. Matter of fact, some of them went even farther than adumbrations, right? Didn't some of them say, yes, Moses understood the doctrine or something like that? Yeah, I think so. But the reason why they could do that, because they read scripture theologically. They allowed the word of God to sometimes comment on the word of God, even though the text they were in was over here on the timeline. They allowed texts over here to shed light on texts over here. And especially when the red letters do that, that's pretty important. We look briefly at John 10, that passage understood rightly teaches one divine power signified by a metaphorical use of the word hand executed by two divine persons, the father and the son, for the preservation of Christ's sheep. We must take our doctrine of God and Trinity with us while interpreting Holy Scripture. Now, very briefly, chapter one of the Holy Scriptures, chapter two, of God and of the Holy Trinity, chapter three of God's decree, chapter four of creation, chapter five, so on and so forth. I said it yesterday, I'll say it again. To read the confession properly, you have to take all the chapters with you as you keep going, right? Now that's very interesting. If that is true, and I think it is, can we say this? To read the Bible, you have to take all the things that you learn over there back with you over here to understand it properly. Yes, that's why I say, you know, when you have the word of God on the word of God, you have the word of God on the word of God. Sometimes God says things, reveals things through Moses or the writing prophets that is pregnant with meaning. Like divine acts sometimes are pregnant with meaning, the meaning of which is not fully recorded the first time that divine act is recorded. Is it okay for God to act and mean more by the act than he first records through, let's say, Moses? Can God wait to tell us that acts are pregnant with meaning after he first records it through a human penman? If you want to restrict God on that one, you got big problems. Can God say things that are pregnant with meaning that are subsequently explained more explicitly for us? Yes, Chuck got this. My point, Chuck mentioned that, so my point is that we have to take theology proper with us. It's the most fundamental thing. God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. God, Elohim, created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. That's the way we should read Genesis 1, by the way. God first, theology, then economy.