The Trinity Is Not A Problem!

does the Trinity hopelessly contradict is it an example of how Pagan thought has creeped into the church is it necessary to believe in the Trinity be saved and as belief of the Trinity have any practical application for my life or your life today our guest today Dr Fred Sanders is a colleague of mine at bio University and one of the leading experts on trinitarian thought he's the author of a book called The Deep things of God how the Trinity changes everything Fred it's great to have you on this is long overdue I've been looking forward to this conversation one thing I've never asked you in our conversations is why have you committed so much of your professional life to studying the trinity yeah it's good to be here Sean um you know it's it's a good question when I when I discovered theology you know I originally started out as an artist and then when I found out there was such a thing as theology I just felt head over heels in love with it just just can't get enough of it and as you go further along in graduate education you have to specialize you can't do everything but so I you know resenting the need to specialize I thought what's the thing I could study that sort of requires me to study everything anyway you know I was gonna have me have to be sharp at philosophy and know my church history and be able to do biblical interpretation and understand how it applies spiritually and so the doctrine of the Trinity has just been that for me that's that's interesting I didn't know the backstory in that now let's start with kind of what you might call certain low-hanging fruits so to speak the kind of questions that you get asked and then as we work through this we'll get tougher and tougher questions but the word Trinity is not in the Bible why believe in the Trinity when it's not even explicitly mentioned in Scripture yeah well it's a good distinction between what's explicitly stated or summed up in a single word um as opposed to what's taught in the Bible throughout scripture but without the technical term so um yeah when you when you make that distinction there's no requirement to be an orthodox uh believer in the Bible there's no requirement that you use the t word you know and if someone else if someone else is the trinity in the Bible and they literally mean is the T word in the Bible well that's a short answer just get a concordance you know and know that the word is not there but it's that distinction between um a concept being taught or a truth being established as opposed to the one word for it the one word is super handy I think it might have been John Calvin who said you know I used extra biblical terms like this to specify what I mean specifically because it saves so much time it concentrates uh a broad teaching of scripture down into a single word so the word is extra biblical but the concept is not extraviblical yeah and I don't want to push this too far but when we say Bible of course we're referring to the Old Testament plus New Testament Canon of scripture the word Bible doesn't occur in the Bible [Laughter] right as something that points to that particular Canon of scripture um but it's a very useful word because I say it and you know what book I mean that's that's excellent I like that a term I often uses aceti which means God's self-existence is taught in the scripture but the word is not so we're talking about the concept okay good now I've heard different debate about this some say that tortullian first used the word Trinitas obviously kind of late second century maybe early third century is that true or when was the first time this term starts showing up referring to God's characters being Triune yeah a good question um it does show up around the year 200 in tertullian who uses that Latin word Trinitas a nice thing about the Latin word is you can tell that it's a kind of an abstract word um that is it doesn't mean three but it means something like threeness and so it's one thing to talk about three but it's another step back of abstraction to say I don't mean three I mean threeness you can get how that's like an abstract category um so every language is talking about three all the time but when do you have the occasion to talk about threeness um tertullian does that right around the year 200 he also comes up with the formula one substance in three persons so he just Nails it all right there in North Africa you know into the second century it's really great of course now in Greek you would say something like trios and one of the Greek apologists maybe 40 years before that or 30 years had already used triops in that sense and while we're doing the language thing um I got curious I got curious one time about the first occurrence of the word Trinity in English uh English is a relatively young language globally speaking compared to things like Latin I found it in an English accent homily uh way back in in the you know around a thousand or something like that or 800 I don't know um but the thing is the Anglo-Saxon word you know Old English proper uh for Trinity is I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right because I don't really know English accent but you can just look at the word and say oh all it says is threeness so the first occurrence in English of the word Trinity it comes into our language just as the word threeness because that's what it means right not three but the threeness of the one God okay say anybody's sitting here going there's no way you spent all this time to track down the first English first uh version or use of the Trinity I'd say look behind the man look at all the books that he has he is a nerd just like I am but you even have more books this is part what we professors do um now I I'm curious Christians seem to differ over this whether or not the Triune character of God is explicitly or implicitly taught or hinted at in the Old Testament what's your take on the Old Testament view of the character of God insofar as we mean God being Triune yeah um it's a great question and when I teach the Trinity so you know I've got a bunch of books on the trinity in here and a lot of them start with the Old Testament and then move forward to the New Testament um and they do a lot of good things the problem is that the evidence for the father Son and Holy Spirit as the one God in the Old Testament is the least clear evidence and I think the reason is that this is sort of need to know information it's always been true of God the God is father son and spirit but until the father sent the Son and the father and the son sent the spirit it would have been just sort of like an abstractly interesting thing to know about God until God puts it into action for our Salvation um it doesn't become sort of like Insider or need to know knowledge as a result you can go back to the Old Testament and find all kinds of really interesting phenomena like who is the Angel of the Lord he's not just any old angel he's some kind of messenger of the Lord who he is God's presence but he seems to be like sent from God in some way where it's not just God showing up um word of God and wisdom of God are they sometimes seem like personified attributes of God um but then they seem like more than that you know when God puts his name among the people that means god is among the people but it's not just God it's the name of God I think all of that's wonderful and fascinating stuff and belongs in our understanding of the biblical doctrine of the Trinity but I never start with it okay bottom line is the reason I believe in the Trinity is because the father sent the Son and the father and the son sent the spirit and we are in New Testament fulfillment mode when we talk that way so in a sense you're saying we shouldn't expect to understand God's character being Triune in the Old Testament because Jesus had not been sent in terms of being born of a virgin God in human flesh to reveal this part of God but once we have God come down to the person of Jesus sends the Holy Spirit and we have the scriptures we can look back on the Old Testament and see certain maybe hints that we're setting this up but not as clear as like it's going to say there's one God and three persons in that kind of language is that is the whole how you see it that's a Bibi Warfield um used this phrase he said the Old Testament in this regard with regard to the triunity of God the Old Testament is like a chamber or a room richly furnished but dimly lit it's like there's a lot of stuff in there but the lights aren't on until the New Covenant fulfillment once the lights are on you can look back retrospectively and see now that you know who to look for the sun and the spirit you can find them in various places in the Old Testament you know the other question is like how much does it matter to be able to find the trinity in the Old Testament and a couple things I'd want to say there one is if you've ever tried to build this case for the Trinity from scripture if you just start in Genesis and work forward you're bringing out all your weakest least clear evidence first because you're you're looking at like let us make man in our image our huh huh Maybe you know you can see like looking back on it of course I understand why a trinitarian would want to read it that way and why it might be legitimate to read it that way but if you're trying to build the case from that kind of stuff um there's a word that old-fashioned writers use about this they call those admbrations uh like is the Trinity revealed no no but in the Old Testament it's adam-brated it's uh it's like shadowed fourth it's there but not very clearly I feel like I can make that argument in really good conscience because I believe in progressive revelation that there can be something that was always true of God but that God chose to make it known only later and even really important stuff like God's Eternal personal existence is father son and spirit if you don't believe in progressive revelation you've got to find everything in Genesis no matter how hard you have to hold those verses down and torture them that makes sense I even see patches like in Isaiah 6 whom shall I send who will go for us it's like oh is there Singularity and a plurality okay given a trinitarian understanding this fits but you're not going to get the Trinity from that passage uh so I think that's a healthy Fair way to look at it uh how how Orthodox has the Trinity been for the church like all segments of the church Orthodox Catholic Protestant is this as staple of a Doctrine as you will find in church history yeah it really is um one of the great things about setting aside you know my my career and my life to work on the doctrine of the Trinity is at this point of great ecumenical pan-christian convergence so you know I'm a conservative Evangelical Protestant I have things I believe that I'm aware not all Christians affirm um but when it comes to the doctrine of the trinity the great thing is you know I can read Spurgeon on the Trinity I can read the pope on the Trinity um it's not like there's some kind of special Lutheran or Presbyterian version of the Trinity it really is a classic Central Christian doctrine mm-hmm now before we shift to the New Testament I want you to lay out just a basic case for us of how you come to the conclusion that God is Triune feel free to challenge the premise of this question but it seems like a lot of people are a lot of different religions and positions are just deeply offended by the idea of the Trinity and I can understand that somewhat in Islam because God is one and it seems to be calling the character of God As One into play so two bar question do you find that there's a lot of people outside the Orthodox face who Faith who are offended by the Trinity and if so any thoughts on why that might be the case yeah there there are several reasons so if you take the Trinity as kind of a Central Christian teaching on on who God is um there are multiple ways to not teach the Trinity right so you might think it's too much unity and you might think it's too much threeness um uh you might be a subordinationist who wants to say that the Son and the spirit cannot be equal to the father who is the true God that'd be one way of making a mistake um yeah the other ways could be you might think that Jesus is so fully God that the only way to affirm his full deity is to say that he is the father Son and Holy Spirit or something like that so those are two totally different ways of being not trinitarian um but I think I think the one you indicate especially in dialogue with Islam or with Jewish thought uh is the idea that um the doctrine of the Trinity is a form of monotheism and if it doesn't sound like a form of monotheism then I think people get offended does that make sense so if you if you even talk about the Trinity and you put it this way like well some some people believe in one God but we believe in the Trinity that's a complete error the the Christian confession is um some people believe in one God Christians believe in one God the one God we believe in exists eternally is Father Son and Holy Spirit three persons but one God now people might still object and say oh that's nonsanto you haven't made your case oh I can't be satisfied with the way you explain that but we ought to always be understood as making an argument within the bounds of monotheism that's good that that's super helpful so let's do that from the New Testament itself here's a way I often hear a simple case made in the New Testament three steps uh number one that the New Testament affirms that there is one God so Jesus says the Lord our God is one in Mark 12 when he asked about the greatest commandment references the Shema so there's one God Father Son and Holy Spirit are each divine and yet the father Son and Holy Spirit are distinct persons so one God but there's three persons who share in that Divine substance that's kind of a now of course I haven't defended that the holy spirit is God Etc but that's kind of the quick response of the steps that I will work through with somebody that the New Testament teaches do you follow that model follow a different model how do you approach when somebody says show me the trinity in the New Testament kind of from a thirty thousand foot view approach yeah yeah so I do something a little different but I do want to affirm what you just said that's a great model it's kind of you can feel the Little Triangle diagram forming in your mind as you say it right like there's one God and you go to the three points and the father is God and the son is God and the spirit is God but they're not each other I think you can derive about seven propositions from that right if you the father is not the Son and the son is not the spirit and sometimes people will work down through that so that when someone says I don't believe in the Trinity using the t word you can actually then stop and say well which one of these seven propositions are you disagreeing with like do you think there's more than one God do you think the father is the son you know do you think the son is not God and so then you can kind of get your bearings and move around and decide oh I see you're holding to a subordinationist view so it's this one of those seven propositions that uh that you're disagreeing with I think that's a good way of organizing the biblical data I tend to um really focus on the the story of Salvation that the father sent the son and that the father and the son sent the Holy Spirit um that that sending uh in which of course you know Jesus says God with us Emmanuel um but he's not the father with us incarnate he's the son sent from the father who is truly God With Us um and so that question of like how can God send God is to me a great question and the answer is if God is eternally father son and spirit the father can send to the son and then what we've got is the Salvation historical or gospel-centered basis for confessing the doctrine of the trinity now from there you then kind of move on to uh the thing you started with which is okay do I have good biblical evidence that the sun is fully God yes do I have you know good biblical evidence that sun is not just another word for the father doing something different and so then you can prove each of those points so I want to make sure I understand there are certain terms that are used here the imminent Trinity or ontological journey is the character of God the economic Trinity is a term that's used sometimes sometimes to describe how God maybe communicates with us or expresses himself in history through salvation it sounds like you you believe the character of God understand who God is can be understood through the lens of Salvation history the father and the son and then the spirit that economic relational expression we see through scripture is revealing of God's deeper character that's why you you explain the trinity in terms of Salvation history is that fair yeah that's correct and and the more the older more classical language because economic imminent is like 19th century language basically it's fair it helps capture some you know some of the evidence uh the constellations of some of the evidence the older more Classical Languages to talk about the sending of the sun being based on the Eternal uh generation of the Sun in other words the Sun comes from the father in Salvation history when he's sent or or missioned sent on a mission um because in the eternal life of God what you refer to as the imminent Trinity the sun was always from the father he existed always as the the son of the father that is the son from the father that is the eternally generated or eternally begotten second person and it's on the basis of that Eternal relation of fromness that we get the Incarnate son same son eternally the Son of God and in the Incarnation the son of God so I might be getting too much into the weeds here so the relationship of Father and Son that we see expressed in Salvation and history there is something inherent about that within God's character Father and Son how does this not create a kind of hierarchy within God's character itself where the father is Supreme Over the son and then the two of them are Supreme Over the Holy Spirit yeah it's a good question um the the main reason it doesn't create a hierarchy if you think about the revealed names Father Son and Holy Spirit right these are we didn't make these up we you know we weren't thinking like I want you know what did Jesus kind of remind me of it's kind of like a a son of a father you know no this is like straight up you know uh fundamental revealed names of of these persons of the trinity that's what you start thinking about sun and you think well in one sense linguistically it's functioning as a metaphor like I am a son of a father I am the father of a son um what do I know about Sons well every son I've ever met is younger than his dad obeys his dad um what else has a mom you know that's just how it works being a son with the biblically revealed language you have to start thinking uh kind of taking away some of those like okay okay Jesus is the son of God and there's not a God the mother that is involved in the sonship of the second person of the trinity nor is the second person of the Trinity younger than the father nor is the second person of the Trinity um obedient to the father as his greater Authority right they have the same Authority so there's these moves you have to make of saying what does the bible mean by giving us this language of son what does Jesus himself mean by giving this language of sin and it can feel weird to say we need to take away some associations but everything true of every created son you've ever met is not what God intends by revealing that he is eternally father and son so I would also say that that power or authority or subordination um is some of what God doesn't mean by revealing this father-son language so father son language is helpful in so far as it goes but we have to be careful working from the bottom too much of our experience of father and son on to the character of God rather than saying this gives us hooks or analogies or truths insofar as it goes to the character of God is that right okay God means what he means my father son he doesn't mean anything we might possibly associate with sonship you know it's not a blank check to put every category of sonship onto the second person okay so what about the holy spirit because we can get Father and Son language but it's not like Father and Son and Daughter or grandchild it's like the holy spirit is like okay wait a minute I get this familiar language and then the holy spirit is added on there what's that Dynamic help us understand with the Holy Spirit yeah I mean I love the revealed language and names of the Holy Spirit but I want to admit that they can be frustrating because if God starts you down a path of thinking about relational language in this way the name holy spirit let me complain about it for a minute I've already confessed that I love it you know Pro the holy spirit's self naming I affirm that um but if I were to complain about it I'd say like well it's confusing that it's not relational and it doesn't sound very personal right so Father and Son those sound like you know people um those are persons in relation but holy spirit what is that it's like a Sanctified breath I it doesn't and then here's another complaint um the father and the son are both holy and the father and the son are both spirit right God is Spirit the father is Spirit the son is Spirit somehow if you take the name the adjective holy and the noun spirit and put them together they function in the New Testament as the name of the third person but you see my semi-complaint here is but they're not distinctive you know um I I think that it really keeps us from projecting too much family relational kind of language onto God that God has sort of made that impossible for us you know Jesus is already careful with it he says when you pray you should pray to your father in Heaven father means he's like your dad in heaven means he's not like you're dead so we're kind of learning how to use this revealed language then Holy Spirit comes along and it's it's the same thing uh it's it's not the expected same thing but it's another way of talking about this other this third one I had not thought of it that way that he was protecting by not a third familial kind of characterization of God's character by having a different name uh that that makes sense that's helpful now let's move to a definition of this and I want you to tell me where I'm getting this wrong so one of the things I do Fred is sometimes in Christian audiences I role play an atheist and I invite questions back and I kind of shoot down do my best atheist response then I help Christians unpack what happened and one of the things I'll often say as as I'm role-playing is you guys believe in a hopelessly contradictory God and I'll say to Christian audiences how many you believe in one God all hands go up how many believe the father's God and the hands will go up and I'll put my hand up and I'll say that's one how many believe Jesus Is God and they'll raise your hands I'll say that's two how many holy spirit is God and the hands will go up I'll say that's three you said there's one God now you're saying there's three Gods you're telling me I Gotta Give Up basic math and logic to believe in your God I'm out now later I unpack for them why that's too simplistic and not accurate but tell me where that falls short yeah um so here's here's the one of the great things about the the one God um there is one divine nature you know one one godness one Divine Essence um and there are three who have that that very same nature they don't have three of the same kind of nature they certainly don't have just similar Natures they have the numerically same nature um so when we say one God we are referring to godness you know there's only one of those godness it's not like there are three three separate uh entities who are each in sort of the category of God or something like as if I said um Define God and give me three examples and I gave you three different examples of God that's not what's going on with the Trinity when I'm naming the father and of the son I'm naming twice the same Divine Essence hmm but they're and and then let me make this works before I make it better um you could you could say uh so any Divine attribute I think of any of the Perfections of what it is to be God I'm gonna have to say the father has it and the son has it and the Holy Spirit has it so it's not going to help me tell them apart like well which one's merciful well the father is merciful the son's merciful and the spirit's merciful let me quote the nice the athanasian Creed here which says uh the Father Almighty the son Almighty and the spirit Almighty but there are not three almighties but one Almighty and the if you know the athenation Creed it rehearses that like four or five times so you get that practice of you seem like you're counting to three but you're not counting to three you're enumerating the three persons who are the one hmm I hope that doesn't sound like double talk um yeah when I say I want to make it better what I mean is Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century talks through this and says here's the thing if you want to distinguish the father and the son you could spend all day naming Divine attributes that'd be a wonderful thing to do sounds like a worship service right just rehearse all the Divine attributes but each one of them refers to the father and the son and the spirit you'll never find a quality or an attribute that distinguishes them unless you quit talking about the essence and start talking about their personal relation so son of the father well that picks out a person of the Trinity father of the son but notice what I'm doing I'm shifting to relational ways of talking relationally I can distinguish them which by the way is why they're not separated and the Very Act of telling them apart I'm uniting them father of the son son of the father so that's why relation is a key category sometimes when people say trinity is not in the Bible how can you use it I want to say you know what's really not in the Bible is the word relation and that's very important because that's what we're talking about here so when you distinguish between the father Son and Holy Spirit you're distinguishing it in a relational fashion yes are you you comfortable if I if I take people and I say look when I say the father is God there's one person who is divine Jesus Is God that is a second person who is divine the holy spirit is God that's the third person who's Divine One Divine being three persons who share that Divine Essence are you comfortable with that language yes yep yeah in one sense the sort of the easy straightforward way to put it is there's one uh what and three who's or if you're to ask God what are you the answer is God you know the Divine Essence um uh what it is to be God you know godness um uh if I ask who are you I'll get three answers the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit I like that I think I've heard Millard Erickson use that if I'm not mistaken one what and three who's now I can hear some people saying you're not walking through the biblical passages I get that we are clarifying a Christian doctrine showing that it doesn't contradict but one of the questions that comes up Fred regularly is that this idea of the Trinity is not only not in the scripture but it's an example of later Greek and or Pagan thoughts seeping its way into the church and some will even Point towards like the Council of nicaea as solidifying this faulty idea of course we're now into the fourth century is there any validity in this claim yeah um so first of all let me affirm sort of the the origin of that claim the idea that um if the doctrine of the Trinity weren't in scripture but were later added by readers of scripture by the early church that would be invalidating in my opinion you know there I can accept certain things that are traditional from the early church and things like oh that's cool you know let's celebrate Easter that time of year that's awesome um but when we're talking about the doctrine of God I think no that's got to be if trinitarianism can't be established Sola scriptura I don't want it and neither did the church fathers you don't see the early church saying like we believe this because we believe it or we believe it because Grandpa believed it they all say it is straight from the Bible right so the most patristic thing you can do is not accept the church father's Authority for what the doctrine of God is they are constantly pointing back to scripture it's not biblical it you know we can't go with it so I want to affirm that part you know that Spirit of the challenge um in terms of whether it was sort of like the corruption of Greek thought flowing in and the Council of nicaea or something like that two things I want to say um one is people who think that generally need to go and read something from before nicaea and I want to say this in a non-condescending way and I'm talking about most people you know a lot of people have already read a lot of stuff but most people who make that charge really need to read anything from before and I see it right that sounds snotty but I I mean I teach in a great books program Tory Honors College at Biola we read irenaeus we read oh we sometimes read tertolian he's not in the regular circulation for us but you could read cyprian you could read the apostolic fathers you could read any Christian document from before the year 325 and you'll just be struck you'll be bowled over by how much they're talking about the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and how they're using the word Trinity and they're just doing a lot of the work now you can always go in and Nuance it and say you know is the way irenaeus uses it in the year 190 the same way that Augustine uses it in the year uh 4 30 um okay fine we can have a detailed discussion but I promise you read any Christian document from before 325 and I see ya and you will you will notice trinitarian thought patterns in it they're really right there so um the other thing I want to say is nice is great so one reason people will focus on and say that's where the Trinity stuff started is because there is a real breakthrough or step forward in the clarity of how we talk about Christian doctrine there it's not progressive revelation God didn't speak it and I see you but the church just had a breakthrough where they said you know you can go a long time trusting Jesus as Lord and never ask the the ontological question about his essence you know millions of Christians have lived faithful and deep lives of discipleship without raising an ontological question about the being of the second person did you raise it though you've got to get it right you can't raise the question what is the Sun what is his Essence what is his ontology and come up with the answer he's like God like you'll be fine not raising it but once you raised it you have to get the right answer and nicaea is where we got the right answer to the to the is-ness question and the key teaching of nicaea is that the Father the Son is of the same Essence as the father and this is a Greek kind of careful language to express and articulate what it was believed to be in the scriptures itself so the language is fresh and clarifying not inventing the Trinity drawing out what was in the scriptures and of course is still in the scriptures yeah yep um some Scholars use the category of a judgment that you can make so there's Concepts that you work with but then there's a you use those Concepts to render a judgment about something and so you could talk about the Nicene judgment about the identity of Christ it's made with Greek Concepts everyone's talking great well not everyone and I see actually it's quite quite International but the the central language is Greek the nice thing about that is you think multiculturally in in our world and think what if you had a an African sort of discussion about the being of the second person and I'm talking about like deep Africa further south you know because if you go to North Africa well it is Alexandria you know it is grief in Latin um but if you go further south and you're dealing with Traditions like ancestors and things like that not so much directly being categories or if you go east if you go into China and Asia and you're talking about the Dao and things like that you could use those Concepts from those cultures to render the same judgment that was rendered using Greek Concepts do you have any thoughts on why why doesn't scripture given that the Trinity is so just ecumenical throughout church history and so essential Paul just doesn't articulate it and doesn't just teach it and say hey guys let me just make this simple on us and lay it out why wouldn't we have that more so in scripture why do we have to wait till the fourth Century to have it really codified and have this breakthrough yeah yeah it's a good question it's true there's no single verse or short passage that brings together all the different elements that it would take to totally nail down the doctrine of the Trinity um I think I mean I want to pitch this as an advantage this is a DOT this is a Doctrine about who God is on the basis of all that he's revealed and all that he's done so that when at the end of Matthew Jesus says baptize in the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit so in one sense the whole Trinity is right there right if you if you ask me to give you one verse with the trinity in it I'd say well Matthew 28 19. it's right there it's magisterial the Risen Lord says this um and it's why we say exactly that phrase when we're speaking well of the trinity but of course you have to interpret it correctly and the interpretation of it is spanned out across the right construal of the entirety of scripture so you know I want to be honest about that in one sense threeness is in Matthew 28 19. like if you ask me if the word Trinity's in scripture and I say well Trinity means threeness and there are certainly three in Matthew 28 19 the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit stated absolutely in that way under the heading of the name you know the one name which has within it these three that are named hmm I like how you frame that as a positive I've heard Greg Coco give a talk and my dad did too the same words they both said the Trinity is not a problem it's a solution and I think we'll get to what some of that means how helpful do you find illustrations and you have a favorite one and I ask because I used to have my students when I did theology in high school with Juniors we'd walk through the Trinity and they'd come up with the egg and the husband and father and Coach you know Etc and I remember one time a student said he goes I got it a peanut m m there's the shell the chocolate and the peanut and I stopped and I thought okay we're talking about God's character and we're using the analogy of peanut m m something has gone really wrong so should we not use illustrations at all should we use some insofar as they go what's your take on that yeah I I've got kind of a cottage industry of being an anti-illustration guy on the doctrine of the Trinity so I you know bring a wet blanket with me to all the conferences and throw it on anyone who thinks they have a great idea um temperamentally I'm not that way I'm an artist I read a lot of poetry I love illustrations and examples I just find that when you're talking about the the one God as father-son and spirit there's not a great illustration that covers all that's going on there so if you think about how does the Sun come from the father well you can talk about uh stream flowing out from a source or you can talk about light streaming forth from you know the solar disk there's all kinds of illustrations you can use for individual sort of distinct parts of what goes into the doctrine of the Trinity but when you build up the entirety of the doctrine of the Trinity with all the claims that go into it it's no surprise that there's nothing quite like that right um yeah so so analogies for the whole package I find are what are really lacking they all give you a tiny little instance a tiny little insight into how three could be one without contradicting yourself or something like that um but most of them perfectly illustrate a heresy you know they they slightly suggest the truth but they perfectly illustrate a heresy like you know one one man who is uh husband and father and Coach um that that's perfectly modalism like that's a non-trinitarian it's a great illustration of modalism does it give you a tiny insight into something about the Trinity yeah the other thing I say about um using illustrations for something about God that's kind of that tone you hit there at the end right like we're talking about the character of God when I'm thinking about one of these really uh big and Central Notions about God there's not going to be something like it like I can't define God and give you two examples or tell you what that's like I believe God made everything out of nothing um what's that like well what is it like to make everything out of nothing I don't think it's like anything I mean it's kind of like I went to the kitchen and I was hungry there were no sandwiches and I did something and then there was a sandwich at the end of that like I created a sandwich for lunch and you you hear that and think I mean kind of but that's a tiny bit like creation and infinitely unlike creation and I want to say like yeah if that will satisfy you like that analogy god making the universe is like me making a sandwich right if that's your standard for what an analogy is going to be then we got some great ones on the Trinity they're like they're about that similar I think that's real interesting because that's where I kind of started teaching theologies we'd only talk about illustrations to show how all illustrations fall short so father son and Coach there's one person three modes like you described hence modalism so there's a kind of threeness in terms of role but not in terms of personhood there's the three leaf clover there's the egg you know like we walk through why they fall short but when it's all said and done if we're talking about the infinite all good self-existent God maybe we should be struggling to understand God's character in some fashion so to me it seems like the goal is to show there's there's no logical contradiction in this it's faithful to scripture there's a mysterious element here that we should expect of God's character uh and I'm okay with that that tends to be how I frame it with folks do you frame it that way or do you add anything to that no I frame it that way and also I'm always pressing for the connection between the Trinity and the gospel because I think the analogy question often comes out of this felt sense that it doesn't matter like okay so sure it's not illogical and it's in the Bible but why does it matter and there's that that Gap kind of opens up where people start wanting to ask questions to try to get to the meaning or the the significance of it and basically an analogy is an answer to the question what's that like and so when you when you have no idea why something matters you might ask like well here's a good question that sometimes helps me understand things what's that like the bad news is it's not going to help you very much with the Trinity because the Trinity is not like very much um I would rather go back and try to scratch that itch before it generates that can you please give me an illustration question so if someone is convinced that like I believe in the Trinity because the father sent the Son and the father and the son sent the spirit and I guess a presupposition I didn't mention is God doesn't change like God didn't turn into the father and son in spirit but if the father sent the son who is God and the father and the son sent the spirit who is God and God doesn't change then God must inherently essentially be Trinity now let's go down the road of what you're suggesting it's relation to the gospel obviously to be saved somebody has to believe in the gospel He also mentioned that the Trinity is an essential Doctrine throughout church history so Central historically but also Central theologically does somebody have to believe in the trinity in order to be saved and I had somebody ask me this week when I was having a conversation with somebody he said clearly there were people like even the thief on the cross couldn't articulate the Trinity obviously he might not even understood the spirit but that knew it Jesus Is God sufficient to be saved so how much does somebody have to believe in the Trinity to have salvation yeah it's a great question so one thing to say about it is first of all to raise the stakes a little bit and say we can talk about lots of information that's not necessary for salvation but with the doctrine of the trinity we are talking about the character of God like the this is the this is the official Christian answer to who is God and so it gets you into this Ballpark and it's a little bit of scary ballpark it's like I guess in the bumper of how wrong can you be about the identity of the Savior and still be saved because if someone tells me they're trusting Jesus for salvation my first instinct is to Rejoice if they then say something weird like Jesus is a space alien on a grand tour to bring us laser guns then I think like oh okay you said Jesus and I thought we were saying the same thing but it turns out you're using the J word not to refer to the to the right individual you know um so I don't know how wrong you can be I got some definite wrong answers where I think oh well the space alien guy just clearly is not talking about Jesus he's just saying the same syllables um something like that's going on with the Trinity we're talking about the the character and the identity of the The God Who Christians worship um the question about do you have to believe in it to be saved is it's a it's a legitimate question I've got an answer but I do want to point out that it's sort of a question asked on the outside of the doctrine what I mean is from the inside of the doctrine you're confessing a gospel-based uh revelation of the Eternal identity of God that is that the father sent the son the father and the son sent the holy spirit this is who God is this is who we know and this is how we know him right one of the beautiful things about seeing the gospel Trinity connection is it doesn't just pick out and identify who God is but it also rehearses how we are unified with God right I've told a little tiny gospel story when I say the father sent the Son and the father and the son sent the spirit um and so once you're inside of that you see oh Trinity and salvation go together they they harmonize you can't they inform each other an understanding of the Trinity um raises your understanding of the Gospel to a much higher level and understanding the gospel helps you understand who God is uh the god of salvation hmm you can go to the outside then and say like from not having understood that gospel Trinity connection you can ask do I have to believe this to be saved um and you can kind of feel how oh well now we're kind of at arm's distance with it um I would give the same basic answer which is it's possible like the thief on the cross like millions of faithful Christians and through history it's possible to never raise the question of the being of Jesus Christ and and you know what is his ontic status um but but once you raise it it really is crucial to get it right there's one thing never to wonder about whether the thought the son is with the father it's another thing to have it occur to you and say nope he definitely is not of the same substance as the father he said and then you've only got a few options right he's he's not God he's a Lesser God he's just another way of talking about the father doing something um those all begin to diverge and I really sympathize with how it seems like you're only a degree off early on but you know on a journey into Infinity that degree is going to matter when you're trying to pick out the identity of God when I was asked this question I said I don't think somebody has to be able to articulate and grasp what we mean by the Trinity but I'm not sure somebody can be saved and deny it when it's PR when it's accurately presented that was kind of the distinction that I made because I had a good friend of mine who's worked with crew for years and I said hey give me an example of Trinity I was like here's my understand I'm like that is a complete heretical doctrine of the Trinity and I have no doubt about this person's salvation I said hey let me unpack this and clarify what's meant they're like yeah that I got it that's what I meant I'm like okay just couldn't express it had some bad ideas but when it's clarified it shows that you do know the one true God so don't have to positively affirm it but can't deny it is that too simplistic or would you kind of agree with that in general I would agree with that in general if we're talking about individuals you know okay um the thing about the doctor screen is it's it's a very large Doctrine it takes real Biblical fluency to kind of see it and be persuaded by it um so I would say with Christian organizations I'm going to have a higher standard you know if I'm talking about a church and they're like just refusing to do the work of being articulate about the Trinity or put it in their statement of faith I'm going to come down pretty hard on that um but you know with individual Believers it's it's like it is in everything where you have advanced knowledge versus more preliminary knowledge some people are not um you know some people are living great Christian faithful lives but are not gifted at being articulate about what they believe about anything right like they can't tell you how to fix your plumbing right or they can but they can't tell you about something like the doctrine of the Trinity yeah a lot of leeway for that but I would I would really shift the burden of proof to the church or organization in which that person is trying to live an intelligent Christian Life now in my experience the Trinity comes up either when people like Jehovah's Witnesses or maybe Mormons are critiquing Christian theology or in a Christian worship song now and then the Triune God or it gets a quick reference tagged on but I can't really think of many sermons and messages that really present in a trinitarian fashion God's character is it a lack of understanding is it embarrassing about the Trinity is it too much work what do you think drives some of this when we're talking about like you said God's very character yeah well it is a very large Doctrine I mean um if you're preaching from a passage of scripture even if it's somewhere where the father-son and spirit are mentioned you know or like say Galatians 4 that in the fullness of time God sent his son born of a woman and sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying Abba Father it's you know the T word's not there the key formula father son and spirit is not there but man is there trinitarian gospel stuff happening there you could preach that passage and not really sort of go for it in the big picture there's plenty to talk about there's plenty of application to do there um so I I do think it's a it's a matter of learning the habit of stepping back a little bit and asking the really big question about what's going on there hmm that's helpful do you think that Trinity we could come to an understanding of it from General Revelation and not special Revelation and I asked because the only attempt I've read about this and you would know far better is I believe it was Richard swinburne who said when you look at the relationship between a husband or wife a love for each other there's two that love becomes perfected when it's focused on another hence a child but then another child doesn't add anything to that Dynamic itself not that doesn't anything to the family of course it does there's a sense of loving one another and then loving a third that is a perfect understanding of love that's the closest I've heard of kind of without the scriptures saying a maximally perfect being would be loving this is what it would mean to be love hence goddess Triune do you buy that what do you make of that understanding yeah I um so I don't buy that as a proof of any kind um that that the highest good must be Triune I don't think there are such proofs um I take there to be a pretty strict distinction here between what can be known by uh General Revelation general knowledge of God the kind of theology that can be built up from observing you know the created world um and special revelation whatever else special Revelation is it's like personal uh knowledge about God you know God makes something known that has to be made known by the revealer um so a classic example from Christian theological history is Thomas Aquinas who's pretty famous for saying you can prove the existence of God five ways right anyone who he's committed to the fact that anyone who reasons correctly will know that there is something behind all the things we see going on here and that that thing is called God but then he stops there turns on a dime and says but it's impossible to reason from these created things to the triunity of God to the three the threeness of the that first principle um so it's you know it's kind of it sounds like a mixed bag Aquinas is so some people think you can't prove the assistance of God Aquinas things you definitely can but that you can't improve the triunity of God I I think that's I think that's the right answer Aquinas even says even once it's been revealed you can't demonstrably show it um even once you have the information and I do think the argument like the one you mentioned about the nature of love you can do the nature of Consciousness there's a number of ways you can see into the um the reasonableness you know or the kind of the coherence of tri-unity once it's been given to you but I wouldn't take any of those to be proofs that's fair I like that thinking once we understand God is trying you start to see it in a different way not only scripture but reality but are you going to really work for the bottom up and demonstrate this that's arguably a stretch um all right a couple more questions for you something that sometimes liberal Christians would argue is Fred why are we spending all this time talking about an abstract Doctrine homo usias and Trinitas aren't Christians just called to love their neighbors feed the poor and care for them why all this energy on abstract theology um yeah well I mean it's good I'm all for loving my neighbor as well you know and I think it's really clear that that's uh Central and important to the uh biblical life conduct but to post that as sort of a pose that as sort of an alternative to having accurate understanding of what God has made known it's disjunctive right it's like would you rather love your neighbor or know what God has revealed about himself like why would why would you pose that disjunctively why is that a choice it's not as if it's not as if even I a professional trinitarian Theologian and actually spending every waking hour only thinking about the Trinity to the exclusion of living a Christian Life although believe it or not I bet your wife wonders sometimes where your mind is yeah I might I might get a little abstracted sometimes but but I certainly hope that I'm you know living a recognizable Christian Life also in my conduct um the other thing I want to say about that that that way of sort of framing what it is to be Christian um is it's just extremely loose it's it's such a you have to sort of blur your vision and ignore every detail from the entire Bible and say what this basically means is be kind like okay I am pro-kindness but but um why is this big weird book doing all these things and coming back and pounding over and over things about the nature of God you know why do the Ten Commandments start not even with Commandments but with God reaffirming his identity like three times you know I am the Lord your God why not just leave out the Lord your God part and say don't steal well you could if you're freestyling and you want to make up your own religion but don't tell me that's Christianity right like biblical religion includes deep knowledge of God revealed by God and appropriated by us according to our abilities um and transformed conduct hmm I I think about um right before uh the whole world was about to come Crashing Down On Jesus and his disciples they go on a little Retreat into the upper room turn to John 17 he just talks to them about the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit for like three or four chapters you know and by 17 he just quit talking to them and begins talking to his father so like you could easily imagine saying Jesus you're about to be arrested and terrible things are going to happen in the next couple of days and he's like on a trinity retreat um so I just don't think that these things are disjunctive in that way that's really helpful good classic Christian uh living is good Doctrine and good practice one not at the exclusion of the other but one informs the other I think that balance is is really healthy and biblical if you were going to say like I'm going to quit being kind to my neighbors and instead just study trinitarian theology I'd say like oh that's a bad that's a bad choice you're gonna need to make room for both of those even the demons have good theology you know just for the record so talk to me a little bit about we'll end with this kind of the personal application of the Trinity for being a Christian so for example I've heard people say things like you pray to the father in the name of the son in the power of the Holy Spirit does that mean therefore if that's right then we don't ever pray to Jesus like what would that mean in prayer what does that mean in worship what are some practical things for how we live our lives once we understand that God is Triune yeah yeah so the personal application side it's great that you kind of lead with prayer right um in Christian prayer we are coming to God not on our own authority or in our own name but we are approaching uh in a mediated way right that um to worship God is to come into the presence of God and have access to the father because of the work of the son because God so loved the world that he gave his only son uh that is by the blood of Jesus that we have access to the father every time we do that we're actually acting out a trinitarian form of mediation like that's what's really going on spiritually um in my book deep things of God I describe this as praying praying a prayer that is addressed to the father in the name of the son and is occurring in the power of the holy spirit is sort of making the form of your prayer go along with or harmonize with the underlying spiritual reality um in the book I call it praying with the grain you know like a wood has a grain and you can cut against it but you know it's but you can cut with it too um cat's fur has a grain you can pet with the grain of the cat or against the grain um so nothing goes badly wrong if you don't pray with the green but to pray along with and in harmony with the actual spiritual structure of what Christian prayer is it means that every Act of prayer is a little rehearsal of the overall structure of the Christian spiritual life so that can be a deeper form of intimacy with God you can pray to the sun there are several biblical examples um a prominent one is Stephen the Martyr at the beginning of the book of Acts says Lord Jesus receive my spirit just as Jesus had said at the end of The Book of Luke father receive my spirit um so it's there are even some theologians I think in one Baptist Theologian who said the real test of whether you believe in the deity of Christ is if you'll pray to him because like if you think he's God but you never pray to him that's a little bit suspect like if he's really God why can't you present the the thing about praying to the son is we're also praying to him as God not in our own name not by our own authority but by the mediation of the son right so there's a sense in which even prayer to the son follows that same logic like we're not directing it to the father but it's through the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit um that that same trinitarian prayer is going on there are no biblical examples of prayer to the Holy Spirit but the rule is okay you can pray to any person who is God and so that makes sense yeah I do think that um if you want your prayer life to be normed and governed by scripture overall you should try to hit scripture proportions which means mostly pray to the father sometimes pray to the son you are allowed to pray to the holy spirit it's not unbiblical in the deeper sense it's just that there happen to be no instances of it in Scripture Fred that's great I have so many more questions for you we will have to do a follow-up but I want to encourage viewers who've stayed with us to check out your book The Deep things of God the Deep things of God how the Trinity changes everything for one of the best texts in my opinion to help non-specialists but you certainly have some depth in that book understand what the Trinity is how it comes from scripture and how it affects the way that we live so wonderful book before any of you check out if you uh want to come study with me and apologetics we'd love to have you we have a full distance program here and talking about this kind of theology is a piece of our program because the Trinity comes up a lot in apologetics we'd love to have you have the top raid program there's information below think about joining us we are fully online now make sure you hit subscribe we've got some other interviews coming up on all sorts of apologetics topics you won't want to miss Fred sure appreciate you thanks for coming on for the clarity this is a lot of fun thanks a lot but

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 57,222

Keywords: Trinity, trinitarian, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, Christian, theology, Tertullian, Jesus, holy spirit, apologetics, truth, scripture, the trinity jeff durbin, the trinity ravi zacharias, is the trinity in the bible, what is the doctrine of modalism, trinity, how to explain the trinity to an unbeliever, how to explain the trinity to a new believer, is the holy spirit really god, christianity, unitarian, do mormons believe in the trinity, what scriptures teach the trinity, is jesus the same as god

Id: 4iJifwhHYX4

Length: 58min 58sec (3538 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023