R.C. Sproul: For the Doctrine of the Trinity

thank you Chris I've been given the task of speaking on the subject of defending the Trinity in this day and age and before I do that let me just say a couple of things by way of preface first of all I want to tell you that in in between this afternoon sessions and this evening we had time for dinner and so we went out to eat and got in all that traffic and we went to the restaurant and they told us it was a 35 minute wait and I looked at my watch and did the calculations and I thought it takes that long to be seated I'm not going to get back in time for this message well there happened to be some folks in there who were part of this conference and they saw the dilemma that I had and they went up and talked to the owner and traded their time for hours to make sure that we were able to have our dinner so greater love hath no man than this then they give up his reservation for a better one of the questions I get frequently from people at my age is that they say given your experience and where things are now in church history what you anticipate will be the greatest issue that the church will face in the next twenty five to fifty years and I always answer that question by saying that I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet then I have no real insight as to what that problem will be but if I guess my guess will be that the great issue that we will face over the next decades both inside the church and outside the church will be with respect to the issue of the deity of Christ and consequently of our doctrine of the Trinity and I say that for this reason that in church history there have been for centuries where the church's affirmation of the deity of Christ worth under attack with a vengeance and those for centuries were the fourth century which I'll be talking about a little later God willing the fifth century the 19th century and the 20th century and the issues that surface in 19th century European liberalism with its all full watt assault on the deity of Christ carried over into the 20th century and did not end at the end of the 20th century those matters have carried over into our own day and I see the issues being only exacerbated in the days to come so I think it's imperative for Christians now to be prepared to defend our affirmation of the deity of Christ and with it a full orbed confession of the classical doctrine of the Trinity I've heard so many people attack the Trinity out of ignorance I heard one philosopher make the comment that he could not ever be a Christian because at the heart of Christianity is this doctrine of the Trinity which he said is a manifold or manifest contradiction and terms and he said to believe a contradiction is to jump not in the faith but to credulity and to be a fool and I agree with part of what he says if I thought that the Christian faith was contradictory I would sleep in tomorrow morning and I wouldn't give it another five minutes of my devotion or consideration if I thought the doctrine of the Trinity was contradiction contradictory I would not affirm it I would not believe it and I would discard it in an instant that may offend some of you who might think that I'm placing reason above God I trust that that's not the case but I am convinced that what God reveals though is not something that we can always understand it is never contradictory and the church throughout church history has been extremely careful in her formulation of the Trinity not to articulate it in contradictory categories which I hoped is shown a few moments I've also heard Christian leaders describe the Trinity like this well we believe that one plus one plus one equals one well that's not only bad arithmetic it's ghastly theology because that's not what we believe with respect to the Trinity and so let's take some time here tonight to see what it is the church has believed and why over her history and let me first pray before we do that let's pray our Father and our God we know that the first article of our theology is your incomprehensible 'ti that none of us has the capacity to plumb the all the total depths of what you have revealed to us but we rejoice in the clarity of what you have given to us in in so far as we can grasp it so we ask that tonight you would stoop to our weakness to our frailty and the fragility even of our thinking and assist us by the presence and the power of your Holy Spirit who is also the spirit of truth for we ask it in Jesus name Amen I'd like to begin by reading a very short passage of Scripture but at an extremely important passage of Scripture with respect to the subject that we're considering tonight about the Trinity I'm looking of course at the first chapter of the Gospel according to st. John to the prologue beginning at verse 1 and reading through verse 5 that's John's Gospel chapter 1 verses 1 through 5 we read these words in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God he was in the beginning with God all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made in him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it now when I say these first five verses of John's Gospel have an enormous significance I am thinking first of all of church history in this five verses we have reference to the word and the word word here translates the Greek word for word the Greek word logos or log us and in the first 300 years of theological reflection by the strongest minds that God gifted the church with in those early centuries the virtually the entire focus of their insight was on these five verses that is what we call logos Christology dominated the reflection of the Christian Church for the first 300 years of her history and I would say also it is because of these first five verses of John's Gospel that the Christian Church found it necessary to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity and that which made it necessary was not only the teaching here positively of what is written in John's prologue but also because of the attacks against Christianity from heretics one of the great side benefits of heresy throughout church history is that heresy always forces the church to greater precision and clarity about what we do believe and what the Bible teaches is so that we may differentiate the truth of Sacred Scripture from the distortions and falsehoods carried about by heresy now there are some strange things found in these opening verses and there's a little piece of irony that most people will not catch as they read the first line of the verse of the first five verses unless they are reading it in the Greek and have some understanding of the Greek now I am NOT an expert in Greek but I do know a little Greek he's a tailor I took my trousers to him and he looked at me and he said you rip ADIZ and I said yes and he said I'm entities so so I know a little Greek but we read here the first three words of John's Gospel that echo the first three words of the book of Genesis in the beginning now that's three words in English in the Greek it's two words in those two words are n RK and the word RK is translated by the English word beginning now if you'll indulge me for a moment that word RK has an enormous history behind us in Greek philosophy the ultimate quest of the Greek philosopher was to find what they called the ark a principle that will explain all of reality because that Greek word RK can be translated not only by the English word beginning as it is here but the word RK means or can be translated beginning or chief or ruler and when the Greek philosophers were searching for the ark a principle they were searching for ultimate reality the ultimate ruling principle that explains everything that there can be the chief idea the big idea that is foundational to our understanding of all that the is now you're familiar with the use of this term RK when it becomes carried over into the English language usually as a preface that we use in English and translate it with the word arts we've heard of arch bishops arts enemies or in a shortened version arc angels there are angels then there are Archangels now what's the difference between an ordinary angel and an archangel an archangel is a boss angel an archangel is a chief angel he's a ruling angel of a bunch over a bunch of lesser angels an archbishop is a bishop who is ruling over many priests and the rest in the church and you may have enemies or rivals like the Pittsburgh Steelers we have rivals and then we have the Baltimore Ravens who are arch rivals chief rides they rise to the level of enemy in our football language so you get the idea of what the word arch means and it's interesting that John uses it right here being translated beginning now when the Greeks sought for that arch principle that archetypal idea they asked the question is that ruling principle ultimately won or is it many is that more than one is it a plurality or a singularity and the idea that ultimately came to bear in Greek philosophy was that the ultimate principle by which everything was to be understood was a single reality a single principle what they called a mono RK it's starting to get the taste for that word in the English language a mono RK or shorten it to monarchy and when we talk about monarchs we usually think of what kings or queens and nations that are ruled by kings are called monarchies because it has a single ultimate authoritative ruler now Judaism at its core confessed a peculiar type of monarchy there is only one Altamonte ruling being who is the foundational being and principle of all that there is he is the king of the universe the supreme monarch and and there's only one of them that's why Judaism at its core celebrated what we call monotheism one God now the problem that the early Christian church faced in dealing with her theology was that the Christian community of the first century was totally committed to monotheism they embrace the Shema hear o Israel the Lord your God is one and so they also understood that the most foundational sin of fallen humanity is the sin of idolatry and what idolatry involves is the worship and service of an idol who is not God Paul develops that in Romans 1 that the fundamental sin of the human race is to exchange the truth of God for a lie and serve and worship the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed for ever and so to ascribe worship to anything less than God would be to fall into the worst type of idolatry remember that the Christian faith grew out of Judaism and with the embracing of Jesus there was not at the same time a repudiation of classic biblical monotheism but the difficulty that the church had in understanding her faith was to reconcile the multitude of references in the scripture that would indicate the Bible's teaching that Jesus was God incarnate he shares titles that belong only to God aigo II me the I am formulas of John he has given the supreme title that is given only to God Adonai the very name Lord is a title reserved for God and for God alone he got himself in all kinds of trouble with the Pharisees when he claimed for himself prerogatives that every Jew said believe belong only to God jesus healed people on the Sabbath and when that created such an outdoor by his contemporaries he said I did this so that you may know the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath now if the Pharisees were angry before jesus said that their anger became exponential when they heard it but he said because when he said I'm Lord of the Sabbath they got the message they say wait a minute Jesus God's the Lord of the Sabbath and Jesus is saying yes and and on another occasion he heals a person sins and they say who do you think you are I do this jesus said that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins which again the Pharisee said wait a minute that's a divine prerogative so you have this problem Steve gave that masterful defense of the resurrection and he made brief reference to Thomason is skepticism and when Jesus appeared in the upper room to him and invited him to put his hands into his side and to look at put his fingers into the wounds in his hands we don't know if Thomas ever did that we know that what he did do was fall on his knees saying my Lord and my god and responded in a posture of worship I'll notice in the book of Acts when Paul and Silas and Barnabas and are on their journeys and they do marvelous things that people will bow down to them and they rebuked them worship us were just human beings and even the Angels if people seek to worship them the Angels routinely and characteristically rebuked those who would ascribe worship to them because they understood that worship belongs only to God and they give any worshipped anything less than God as I said is blasphemous and idolatrous well in the beginning we read in John was the word the logos logos that was in the beginning and we read and the Word was with God cross that on now the Greek has three different words that can be translated by the English word width there is para which means alongside right there is we have paramedics paralegals work alongside the legals and the medics and we have para ministries that work alongside the church and so on para means to be with that is beside somebody they have the word soon which we get the word the prefix sin that's yn where you synchronize your watches and make them read the same and the Jews came together when they would gather corporately they came to the synagogue a the synagogue that was the place where the people were with each other so that's to be with other people in a group and then they had this word cross the root of which makes up the most of the word prosecco which is the Greek word for face and the idea with Pross is that with mess is in a face-to-face relationship the closest possible relationship the two people can have is not to be beside one another but to be with one another in this face-to-face relationship and so John tells us that the logos who was in the beginning was Pross God with God in this intensely close-knit relationship but so far what we've heard is that the logos is being distinguished from God there's God and then there's the logos there's God in the one who's with God that would suggest on the surface at least two different entities wouldn't it God and somebody with God now you're beginning to see well some people count one plus one you know but then everything explodes with the next assertion in the prologue and the Word was God the logos was not only with God in the beginning not only profs God face-to-face but now it is said flat out he was God so that the deity of the logos is clearly confessed here by John in this writing do you see why the church then had to go to the drawing board so how can we understand this how can someone be on the one hand identified with God and on the other hand the distinguished from God so that you have an identity and a distinction and therein came the development of Trinitarian theology now the two great attacks in the early centuries against Trinitarian thinking that was drawn from John chapter one were two different types of menarche anism now we've already labored the meaning of that idea of monarchy and monarchy in ism is an ism that is related to the concept of one reigning being and the two kinds of monarchy anism that threatened historic Christianity were called first of all modal istic monarchy anism and second of all dynamic monarchism now you've all heard about modal istic monarchy nism and if I gave a pop quiz to you all and said would you give me a quick definition of modal istic monarchy anism you could surely all do that right how many of you never heard of modal istic monarchy nism I'm looking at those people who come on let me see their sins because the people that haven't raised their hands I'm going to call on to ask ask them to give a definitive definite let me see the hands again how many have never heard of moto Leslie uh-uh yeah all right how many of you have heard of it but you still couldn't define it ah is there anybody left out there well let me take a moment to explain and define moto lisi monarch anism because it was one of the most severe threats to the Christian faith that the church had to face in the early days you've all heard of Gnosticism the gnostics of the second century and actually in the late first century the Gnostics were called Gnostics because the Greek word to know is the word gnosis gnosis it but it's pronounced gnosis and you have you get that word all the time when you go to the doctor you're looking for what a diagnosis and if the diagnosis is not a friendly one the next thing you want to have is a prognosis and tell me how this thing is going to carry on from here and so the Gnostics were that group of people who claimed that they had a special knowledge a special mystical insight to truth that was superior to the Apostles and that knowledge did not come through rational inquiry or through scientific experimentation examination but it came to this immediate mystical insight and not everybody enjoyed the gift of gnosis only the Gnostic OI the Gnostic OI were not Gnostic fish the Gnostic OI I just want to see if you're awake here we did have a heavy dinner the Gnostic OI were the people in the know well the Gnostics not only had this system of knowledge but they had a view of reality that was very pantheistic or modal istic and their idea is that ultimate reality was one but this ultimate reality or being sent out emanations from the center and the further away from the core that these emanations radiated the lower level of reality you had so that you would go from from God to the angels to people the animals to vegetables to rocks and you get down to the rock and the rock is an emanation from the core being that's so far away from the center that there's not much of the substance of the emanation or though of the reality to be found in it but it's still part of a being still pantheism now in the third century there was a teacher who adopted this idea of different levels of beings that were modes of being that flow out of the core being and this man's name was Sebelius and Sebelius was a mode allistic monarch Ian and that means simply I miss his easy stuff that means he said that that Jesus and the logos are divine in the sense that they participate the logos participates in the very being of God in the very essence of God but is it a lower level than the level of God with me his favorite analogy was the Sun and the Ray that comes from the Sun we see Sun the rays of the sun shining on their earth and we know that they partake of the essence of light and of the Sun but we don't associate those with the core ball of fire that's up there that gives light and heat to the world these sunbeams radiate out from the center of the Sun there are the same stuff or the same essence as the Sun but they are not the Sun you understand that so the next time you sing Jesus wants me to be a sunbeam you think of Sibelius and his heresy now the way the language that Sibelius used to articulate his view was that the logos that we call the second person of the Trinity was of the same essence as God homo meaning sane you see us and if you know anything about Greek that little tailor I know a word osseous is the present participle of the verb to be so you can translate the word you see us by the English word being or substance essence and if those are too high stuff okay so Sibelius was saying that the logos of which John speaks is of the same stuff the same essence the same substance as God but was not God just as the Sunbeam cannot be identified with the Sun you got it now in 267 at Antioch Sibelius was condemned as a heretic and the term homo osios of the same substance or essence was condemned as a heretical concept that's important for us to to realize that the church categorically rejected the term homoousios there in the third century in 267 at Antioch and then what happened the threat from mode allistic monarchy nism began to dissipate and pass away but a new threat arose that was even worse and this new threat was called dynamic monarchy anism dynamic monarch it is not moto listing the Archaean ism you know what that means now but dynamic monarchy anism which dynamic means something that progresses or moves is alive it changes and the chief exponent of this doctrine was a man whose name was arias a are I you s and he developed the idea that the logos was a high being but was a created being the most elevated being of all beings apart from God the firstborn of all creation the Monogue anis the only begotten of the Father and the logos enjoyed the highest posture in the universe except for God high enough that we could worship him but not to be seen as God and his chief argument revolved around the use of the Greek word cannot Oh genome I which is translated to be to become or to happen we get the word generation from that we get the word Genesis from that and in Greek categories anything that has been begotten means that there was a time that it did not exist and when it was begotten at the moment it was begotten that's the moment it started to be and since the Bible speaks of Jesus being the first born of creation and being the only begotten of the Father Arius is saying that the Bible itself denies the deity of Christ but rather affirms that he had a beginning because the Bible uses the term begotten with respect to Christ now this provoked a fierce controversy that threatened the unity of the entire Roman Empire and the sons of Constantine were deeply involved in the arguments and debates that went on we've heard of Saint Athanasius who defended the fool deity of Christ over against Arian and this whole issue came to a head in 325 at the Council of Nicaea now you know the Apostles Creed many of you know the Nicene Creed was it here that Steve Lawson referred to the Nicene Creed or was that on the ship here on the ship okay well some strange things happened at Nicaea without going into all the details at the end of the day the church declared condemning areas as a heretic the church declared that the logos the second person of the Trinity was homo you see us with God now in 267 they condemned that word and said that that Christ was home oi you see us like God but they shrunk back in horror from saying he is God because Omo see us carried all the baggage of modalism you got it and so here's what happened from 267 the 325 the church did a 180 not because the church had changed its mind but because they realized that arias was using the language that the church approved in 267 home oi you see us to deny the deity of Christ now arias went into some really silly stuff where he says well Jesus was not God but he sort of became God when he was adopted by the father and that's why it was called dynamic monarchy anism and a heretical form of adoptionism but that's for another day but the important point they have to understand here is that the church was saying notice of values had the church we believe that Christ was home oi you see us not homo not when we get the Arias who says he's home Oy but not homo the church now embraces the formula that Jesus are the logos is homo you see us of the same essence and herein is the historic definition of the Trinity that the logos is of the same essence the Nicene Creed says that the second person is Co eternal and Co substantial with the father meaning there was no time in which the logos didn't exist but the logos has existed from all eternity and the logos is of the same essence as the Father and yet is distinguished from the Father but the distinction between the father and the son and then also the Holy Ghost was not what we would call an essential distinction because the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are all Homo you see us they are the same essence the same being there's only one being and we call God but what one being is triune he that one single being or essence is Father Son and Holy Ghost again if you're familiar with the Nicene Creed you have those strange words with respect to the logos who was begotten comma not made begotten not made that is what Nicaea was saying is that the language of the New Testament that speaks of Christ being the firstborn that speaks of Christ being the only begotten that begotten this there is not used in biological categories but rather in relational categories that the father and the son are the same essence although they have a different persona or subsistence and part of the thing we struggle with and we use the formula that God is one in essence three in person the thing it's really difficult here is when I see I talked about person or persona it was not using it in exactly the same way we use the term person when we talk about a person we're individuating this guy from this guy we figure one person one being there were one being one person we've never conceived of anything that was one being yet three persons and the word persona came from the Greek theater where you've seen the symbols of the theater where you see a mask with a smile on it and that smile indicates that the play is what kind of a play comedy and then if you see the other mask with the sourpuss on it what does that indicate it's a tragedy I had the privilege with vessel before we were married over fifty two years ago the privat wait a minute wait time on we weren't married over fifty two years ago we won't be married for 52 years until Monday they're applauding me or is it us maybe it's you but in any case we saw this play in New York before we were married her father took us to New York and we had tickets to the play called JB then you heard that a modern version of the story of joke and the lead character was Basil Rathbone who played Sherlock Holmes and also the Sheriff of Nottingham in the classical movie with Robin Hood we sat in the first row and Basil Rathbone was here I mean he was closer than I am to you right now he was eight feet away from me I could have got up and reached out and touched and he had two parts in that play he was God and he was the devil and how did you know whether he was speaking his God or of the devil he had two different masks when he was God he spoke through one mask when he was the devil he spoke through the devil's mask you know what those masks were called in the ancient Greek theater persona persona they were the ways in which different characters were manifested that's why in church history and theology the term that we use most frequently to deal with the Trinity is the word subsistence there is one essence one being but in that of being our three subsistence ha's under existences if you will which we call the three persons Father Son and Holy Ghost not three beings as Paul Crouch teaches truthy ISM that heresy no no no no one being three persons now go back to what I said at the beginning her the Philosopher's saying that's a contradiction no it isn't if I use logical categories in formulation and I say that something that is one in essence and three in essence they're giving me a signal don't lean on this thing I like might come tumbling down all right I won't lean on it if something if I say that something is one in essence and only one in essence and it's three in essence now I speak with a forked tongue now I'm speaking contradiction because the law of non-contradiction states that something cannot be a and non a at the same time and in the same relationship now the church's formulation for the Trinity does not violate that rather we say that God is one in one thing in essence one in a three in person it's not the same as saying as one in a and three and a one in essence and three in essence these one in being three in person it's a mystery none of us have been able to fathom the depths of that but it is not irrational it is not absurd it is not a contradiction and most importantly it is faithful to the scriptures who tell us that the second person the Trinity is God and it is the second person who became incarnate and that the fullness of the god had dwelt within him bodily so that the divine nature of Jesus is of the same essence as the Father now when you get to Christology in the next century and i won't have time to get into the council of chalcedon where the two nature's of Christ are taught that Christ is one in person Jesus is one in person two in nature to an essence this one person has a divine essence and the human essence right so there you do have two essences in one person just the opposite of the Trinity one essence three persons you got it all right so the church ever since then has guarded the boundaries of our reflection and saying is difficult of this is to conceive the depths and the riches of the Godhead we have to understand that there is a unity of being in the Godhead the Father Son and Holy Ghost and yet we must distinguish within the Godhead the persons the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost finally at Nicaea when the battle waged hot the Aryans used to ridicule the Trinitarians and they wrote body songs and jingles insulting the Christians and they would stand on one side of the river sing these mocking songs attacking the Trinitarians and the Christians would stand on the other side of the river and they composed their own fight song that they answered the earrings with and here's the words of that song they would stand on the edge of the river and they would sing glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end amen take that you Aries so the next time you sing the Gloria Patri remember that you are singing the Christian fight song defending the biblical and the ecclesiastical affirmation that the glory that belongs to God belongs to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost now and forevermore let's pray father thank you for this glorious truth of the intricate composition which is not a composition of your very being help us to understand the depth and the riches that dwelt in the logos who was with you in the beginning and was not only with you but was you we thank you in his name amen

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

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Keywords: ligonier ministries, ligonier conference, rc sproul, christian trinity, triune god, one essence, holy trinity, trinitarian, christian theology, holy spirit, rc sproul on the trinity, doctrine of the trinity, one god three persons, trinitarian vs unitarian debate, trinitarian doctrine, trinitarian doctrine false, is the trinity in the bible?, is the trinity biblical?, trinity, reformed theology, sproul, christian, theology, son, father, god, three in person, ligonier conference 2012

Id: Sh72wgZEcKk

Length: 53min 44sec (3224 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2015