The Trinity & Patriarchy / James White and Douglas Wilson / Sweater Vest Dialogues

[Music] we're sort of calling these the sweater-vest dialogues dougie I am uniform uniform of the day is it not this is not gonna work for me in July but it would it would result in fainting and various sundry other bad things like that but last time we got together you know did you notice that we solved all the all the questions there was no controversy no dispute ation the clarity was soaked was just so spot-on that everyone said hey we have it all figured out and there's no more controversy did you notice how that works and notice how James brought it you know in other words it doesn't matter how clearly you express yourselves there's still the Internet just I don't know I'm not sure that the Lord really designed us to have this amount of information coming at us at the speed that it comes at us all the time to be perfectly honest with you but I'll be perfectly honest I did not even know that there was that how many controversies are you involved with adding at one time at one time they come and go they they oscillate they oscillate okay well because I thought I I thought my life was just sort of like that but you seem to I I was informed even after the last program that there's this whole thing about the Trinity and patriarchy and I'm like what seriously and and it's like yeah and like okay well obviously one of the reasons I don't know about some of this stuff as far as what's going on in that way is I'm known as you have a life I have I have a weird life and it's it's a life dialoguing with Muslims and and issues like that and I don't know you know so I I kept on things but I remember and you wrote and a blog article around the same time I believe it was the summer of 2016 the reason the reason I remember this is the controversy broke over the turtle subordination of the son stuff now obviously this is not a new issue I mean you could technically say that this sort of comes up in different forms numerous times in church history it is the essence of the struggle of the post Nicene church to deal with Christological issues to deal with really formulating eventually getting to the Caledonian definition but even then there were there were still some unanswered questions at that point on on particular issues and certainly for me this took me back to the issues that come up see I deal with a lot of people that people inside the church are not necessarily dialoguing with all the time Unitarians Jehovah's Witnesses Mormons Muslims and so I come at this as an apologist who's doing debates in mosques in South Africa so that's a little different than the context that we have in a lot of other places and I think it impacts my concerns and why don't you start off with what what what were your concerns as you saw the dispute starting in 2016 then I'll talk a little bit about some of the proceeding concerns that I had as well so yeah in 2016 there was a nother well wasn't the first time but there was a blow-up about the eternal subordination of the son and some some people Bruce where others in that circle have argued in favor of complementarianism role relationships between men and women that the the argument is a sort of a very short brief easy-to-understand one and that is no complementarianism is fine because coordination does not imply inequality so so in the as they're talking to secularists feminists quasi feminists they want to say well knows the the father is authoritative over the son eternally and that authority and Submission within the Godhead does not imply inequality so they're affirming the Nicene essential of the Equality of the son the full deity of the son but they they want to say that the fully divine son is subordinate to the Father and this is a way of answering feminism where subordination or submission does not equal inequality all right the problem with it is the that that argument I'm not sure who named it the ESS the eternal subordination of the son but it's a bad it was a bad naming job because subordination ism is a classic Trinitarian heresy okay so you have that that's on the on the one hand so that's what those guys did that came out of the complementarian circles you know but they've been saying that for years it was if I if I recall correctly it was someone associated with karl truman that did a blog article in it and sort of real it it's sort of like the gas had been pooling for a while it and and lit the match and ran away it went I think I think they've been saying that for decades yeah and then then some of the pushback started to happen where I would call I don't want to say some of the classic Nicene Orthodox people in our in reformed evangelical circles said hold on hold on hold on there's a there's a problem here the problem and the problem is that if you have authority and Submission within the Godhead Authority and Submission odd intra you know with the with the incarnation not in view right if you have authority and Submission within the Godhead itself doesn't that entail two wills within the Godhead and that's a classic heresy also so if you have one will commanding and the other will submitting and you say you have two wills there then that that that's heretical because God has one will right there's there's one will in the classic formulation of Nicene orthodoxy so what I wanted to do in when I I was not a participant or I didn't have a Jersey on either side of this you know I've and and what I wrote in on my blog in 2016 was an attempt to give everyone their due okay there are important points to be made on both sides here and I think that there is a way of reading reading them harmoniously and not in not in collision but I don't think then that that's also illegal on the internet however I mean see the flag come in immediately that's that can't be done right well that's I'm I'm just a peacemaking kind of guy oh yeah your reputation precedes you yes so so let's let's make sure because these let's just be honest these are not the normal issues that take up most Sunday morning sermons and I wrote a book and I think it came out in 1998 called forgotten Trinity it's been used for a long long time sort of as a as a biblical introduction to the doctrine and so on so forth and I've had so many people comment at the beginning that book I had in the introduction talked about I loved the Trinity and I contrasted I said when have you last heard someone say that you hear them say I love election I love prophecy I love the Bible so on and so forth you almost never hear them say I love the Trinity and I think the primary reason is most Christians are barely functionally Trinitarian if they're Trinitarian at all be kind and that and the father's at Nicaea made the mistake of not outlawing every sunday-school illustration of the Trinity which with every sunday-school illustration or when you're teaching 12 year olds every last one of them is the illustration of some heresy or other yep it is it is it is very true and unfortunately those heresies end up being the substance of much of the preaching in Western Christianity on the subject of the Trinity as well and so and the primary area where people are uncomfortable it's not monotheism it's not the deity of Christ it is what we would call the relationship of the divine persons the the ontological relationship not the economic Trinity that is once once the Father the Son the Spirit choose to save in a particular way they take different roles it's the son who becomes incarnate not the spirit not the father in that context it's fairly easy to recognize the relationship of Father Son and spirit and and things like that it's when you try to go before John 1:14 in the Incarnation and you start looking at the relationship with the divine persons in eternity past that now you have what are called the Opera ad intra the internal operations that that are meant to distinguish the father the son the spirit this is this is tough for most people teaching systematic theology let alone people teaching Sunday schools or teaching their kids at home school whatever also might be and one of the things I noticed in the debate is some of the ads I think there's a mistake common mistake made by the ESS people which is to point to undoubted biblical reference to Jesus submitting to the father and not budgeting for the fact that this was the Incarnate Jesus submitting to the father so so Jesus being obedient to death on the cross and fitted to the point of death on the cross in Philippians him setting his face to go to Jerusalem him wrestling with the Father's will in guess in Gethsemane and going to the cross in obedience everybody agrees that the Incarnate son obeyed his father everybody agrees that Jesus in his humanity was submissive to the Father and and so a proof text that shows that the Incarnate one obeyed his father is neither here nor there in this discussion the issue is not did God the Father send his son to the cross at Jerusalem the issue is did God the Father send his Son into the world right so the the decision for Christ took for the second person in the Trinity to become incarnate the question is whether that was ascending so all the sending in the human life of Christ is immaterial to the just to the point under discussion so we're talking about is there Authority in some and Submission at any level of any kind within the Godhead apart from a world even having been created right so in other words when when we talk about the the eternal covenant Redemption the idea that the father son the spirit and we don't say this temporarily but but logically at some point in time chose to create in such a way as to bring maximum glory to to the Godhead and each of those divine persons took the roles they took was there a necessary hierarchy of relationship prior to that that would have marked the Father and the Son and the Spirit in their relationship to one another so the eternal subordination right not just to a temporal such that when the Incarnation happened it was not conceivable that the father would be the one who would become incarnate that's one of the that's one of the issues that comes up exactly right right right so now the the problem I'd go back and oh and we both used that term for our viewers talking about God in his essence apart from the Incarnation apart from the world we're talking about the relationships of this person's of the Trinity odd intra with within himself without reference to the outside world you know and creation and anything that comes from how he acts in time this is this is God considered simply as God right the way he is right now the so the argument is the the people who are concerned about the economic the eternal or eternal subordination of the son will will say this necessitates two wills because I've never seen a command and a Anna and an obedience to that command that didn't entail two wills which you do have in the garden so Christ says nevertheless not my will but your will so you have two wills there but again that's the Incarnate Christ saying that so if you say ESS requires that you stipulate that the God has Godhead has two or three wills then that would be heretical that really is heresy proper the but the issue is how much of this is us trying to get operate above our pay grade right so when when we get into the inner workings of the Trinity before the world was created I like to think of it as junebugs trying to do quantum physics and and I see the role of the Creed the great historic Creed's is signposts that say don't go there right and III don't go there there's a chasm there there's a chasm there so fully God fully man in at Cal Seton and we don't confuse the the nature's of deity and humanity don't don't make that mistake and we simply assert what what the faith is without being able to do the math right so when people say you can't talk about any kind of authority at all within the Godhead I want to object protest a little bit because I I cannot imagine a command and obedience to a command without some sort of friction or distance between the the person's and I've never I've never seen a command and obedience that was conducted with just one will I've never seen that but neither have I seen someone loving and someone returning that love and have that entail just one will ever everybody acknowledges that the father loves the son eternally right and the son loves the father eternally well is that one will or not I I don't have anything in my experience no that would that would that I could point to and say see that that's an example of it right and we and we have to be very very careful because in two in two areas and this this again is something that I have to deal with very frequently outside of the Christian faith and I'll I'll be honest with you I I think it would have helped some of the 2016 conversation and what has come after that if if more the people having the conversation were regularly having to discuss these things with non-believers with with Muslims and with Unitarians and people like that because there there's there's one area I just want to throw this in because some people could be confused right now because we've talked about the one will of God but there's also a when we talk about Jesus and the Incarnation the hypostatic Union may have heard of conflicts in church history about mono thelet ism doeth elitism one will to Wilden Jesus we're not talking we're we're talking solely before incarnation and really before creation itself and the roles that have been taken by Father Son and spirit this is where a lot of the confusion comes in and obviously there's there is a limitation as to the amount of revelation that we're operating on here and this is also Illustrated of the fact I'm dealing with these issues in other areas right now there seems to be somewhat of a movement of quote-unquote formerly reformed guys toward Eastern Orthodoxy I don't know that I think that's always a constant thing it just goes in ABB's and flows and things like that and so the issues of Sola scriptura tota scriptura development of theology the authority of ecumenical councils all these things are back on the table that have to be thought through and frequently are not thought through in in a meaningful fashion and we as reform people are in between the the people on the one side says just me my Bible out in the woods alone is plenty and then on the other side you have the elevation of an ecclesiastical Authority the subordination of Scripture into a category of written tradition and oral tradition and the church interprets and so on and so forth and all the things that come from that we're in we're in a place where we have to deal with all that you can't be reformed and ignore church history because then you couldn't read any of the reformers because they were constantly talking about church history and they're constantly clearing try telling or augustiner whoever else it might be we don't have that option we have to we have to deal with those things and so let me just mention years ago 1998 so good grief over over 20 years ago I stood at the evangelical theological Society meeting the only one I ever went to with some and you may have heard of Daniel Wallace Dan Wallace is a well-known Greek grammarian he's also real big into the Greek New Testament manuscripts and things like that but Dan Wallace and I stood at a table for over an hour and argued about from the Greek text and the grammar the Greek text this issue in the Carmen Christian Philippians 2:5 211 because he took her Padma stare did not consider equality with God something to be grasped in an active sense and so he was he was really on in that ESS camp as far as what he was saying in regards to the the eternal subordination of the son I was arguing for another meaning of her of heart Padma so when I wrote an article on that subject a few years later I sent it to him to make sure that I was accurately representing him but disagreeing with where he was coming from and amazingly we did that without hating each other again it's a strange strange thing that happens once in a while but so that was that was 98 so that was well before the the 2016 blow-up but it was already very much a part of these things and so let me let me you've you've written some can will we be able to talk about the the article that you sent me yeah yeah yeah it's public okay public and príncipe okay I wanted I wanted to talk about a couple of things than that but I want to just start off by saying if you feel that that I'm wrong here and feel free to you've said I'm wrong about other things so it's okay I've gotten used to it yeah it's probably needs to be said more more often than this but I in in 2016 the first thought that I had when I started seeing the kerfuffle developing was I really struggle and I think this is expressed in Section 4 of your affirmations and denials and we can look at in a section but when I deal apologetically in the defense the doctrines of trinity one of the first things i have to say to people is first of all jesus the incarnate son is absolutely unique as the incarnate son so there is not going to be anything in the created order that i'm going to be able to point to that is going to be able to be a parallel to the hypostatic union because it's it's unique and therefore there's nothing in the created order that is parallel to that in the same way the relationship of father son and spirit he passed is absolutely unique and therefore I really found it to be an inappropriate direction to be trying to say that we should be talking about we should be using as a template something pre creation to become the the organizing principle for something in creation specifically the relationship of male and female in in in mankind so I can see the submission for example God is ahead of Christ Christ the head of man man's ahead the woman there's an there's an order there but the very term Christ is Messiah he's the one who's been sent that's in a in a in a created context it's not in the pre in the eternal context so I struggle with with this idea that that it would even be considered offensive all to call it apostolic to say that that we should be trying to derive these categories or any type of a template or guidance by looking back into eternity at the relationship of Father Son and spirit and saying that means this in how we relate to one another between between the sexes do you heard I'm saying okay I hear what you're saying and I agree with maybe all of it but certainly almost all of it and so here here's how I would respond to that when someone says you know you look friend you've got to be more like God the the response would not be oh you mean omnipresent or you know we know we all know what godly means so Ephesians 5 says be imitators of God as dearly loved children Jesus says that we're to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect we're to treat our enemies the way God treats his enemies we're and one of the way I at the same time what you're saying here has an important component so what I tell people regularly is that God tells us God commands us to imitate things that we cannot duplicate we're told to imitate them not duplicate them so husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her well no husband can die as a vicarious substitute for the sins of his wife he he he cannot duplicate it because what Jesus did for his elect there was unique but the husband is commanded to imitate it so imitate it to use the latin phrase mutatis mutandis all the necessary adjustments having been made when you you remember that look you're not God pal you're you're not Christ the Incarnation was unique God's God has come what theologians call communicable attributes love for example and in communicable attributes omnipotence so if there's an attribute of gods that's communicable then I'm allowed to imitate it making all necessary adjustments if an attribute of God's is in communicable it cannot be communicated to a creature to a finite creature then I'm simply to set that aside and not and not even attempt it it would be hubris and pride and arrogance to attempt to be God right but it's not hubris to attempt to be godly so when so when God says and and for me this is simply an exegetical question in John 3:8 John 3:17 God sent his son into the world that's different than his son going to the cross his son already in the world going to the cross and in John 10 same thing John John is fond of that language Christ is sent into the world and and that tells me that there is some frictionless sending authority a father-son relationship communicates something to me about how I'm to conduct myself with my son or my grandsons I learned something because if I had grown up in a liberal mainline denominations where they talked about God the mother you know God our mother is a completely different cosmos is a completely different friend and it would affect how I behaved it would affect how I thought so God as my mother is going to result in a different kind of Christian scare quotes around Christian and God the Father is going to result in father's taking responsibility loving their sons imitating you know when God the Father says that the baptism this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased I can look at Christ's reception of that blessing and say that's the Incarnate Christ but the father who's speaking is not the is not incarnate the father is is bestowing expressing his pleasure in his son and I can imitate the Sun in his reception of that blessing but there's also something there in the father's expression of fatherly pleasure in his son that I can imitate but not duplicate okay do you see since since we've mentioned the Carmen Christie a couple of times when in in verse seven when when when it says but he emptied himself now I I think all Orthodox folks recognize cannot oh there is is man metaphorically it's never used literally by Paul it's not he's ceased being God but there's a there's reflexive pronoun right in front of it this is something that the son did now Lutheran's take a really interesting view on this but Lutheran Lutheran's are always interesting well well Luther was always interesting and then Lutheran's are even more interesting than Luther was in many ways as well so yeah most most definitely but it if if you take this I take this in in reference to incarnation many Lutheran's to take this in reference to the washing of the disciples feet prior to the crucifixion but I I think this is taking us back in Maternity past and especially when it says taking the form of a servant being made in likeness of men I really think it's a massive stretch to try to apply that to the night of the betrayal but if it is in fact in reference to that the phrase before equality with God but he made himself of no reputation there is it there isn't the use of reflexive pronoun means this is something that the Sun him solved it I think it's one of those most important texts in demonstrating the pre-existence of the Sun as a divine person because this is something he considers this is something that he does this is this is divine action whittling yeah willingly right willingly right so so whatever we do with this the Sun is sent by the father which I see as the the father authorizing what the Sun is doing he's speaking the father's words he were to honor the son he was one other father I mean that's a that's a theme all through through John it's not sent unwillingly and it is sent in perfect harmony and there is a sense in which the son is making himself of no reputation he is he is emptying himself and being made in the form of a servant obviously the father is involved with that the spirits of all without the Incarnation all nine yards this is Trinitarian theology I don't think you can make heads or tails out of any of this if you're not a Trinitarian the first place right so I first I agree with you that that's talking about the Incarnation I think that that's took the that took the form of a servant so he's it's talking about taking on the form of man so my understanding lines up with with yours there and I used a word once or twice earlier in our conversation which is frictionless so if I if I go up and and I'm thinking about the decision-making process within the Godhead about an incarnate was the Christ coming if I have the father or during the son to go and the son obediently going that miss communicates in all kinds of ways right but if I have the son volunteering to go which is sort of like it the way it happens in in Paradise Lost in in Milton the the the Sun sort of says oh well I'll do it you know any volunteers to go that commute that miss communicates also the thing that I found helpful in this and and a little cautionary word here some observers viewers of this might at some point feel like the shunammite boy in the Old Testament where he says to his mother my head my head what do you guys do why are you guys talking about this but I think it's very important and we can get to get to this in a in a moment but the thing I found helpful to me in this is an observation that Augustine makes and that is you don't have the father and the son in a room and the father issuing a command that goes across the room the son receives the command and says well okay I guess I'll do it say you know there's there's too much distance there to wills involved there's it's just a wrong picture Augustine points out that when the father speaks all right the word of the father is the son right so it's not like you have the father in one side and the son on another side and then the command of the father coming across to the son that the son then has to process according to Augustine the son is the word that the father speaks so the command the the the sending of the second person of the Trinity into the end of the world is not detached from the Sun at all he's not a passive recipient who then has to process what the father came up with when the father speaks the speaking of the father is the son he's the Eternal Word he's the he's the word of the father everything that the everything the father has communicated said thought is the is the eternal law Goss the in the beginning was the log us and the Lagos was with God and the Lagos was God so I don't want I don't want to postulate any distance between the father in this on this and at the same time I don't want to say and that means it's a gala terian operation either right so we mentioned earlier I mentioned a document could you and could you tell folks what it is why was produced and maybe how they get hold of it before we just look at one little section of it yeah so at the denomination I'm part of the communion of reformed evangelical churches the presbytery that I'm in is Knox presbytery and it's two two years ago two and a half years ago I was asked by my presbytery to in the light of the controversy in 2016 on the eternal subordination of the son I was tasked with coming up with a position paper in effect that would attempt to give due credit to what everybody was saying in that controversy it was valuable and suggest a way forward you know a way of affirming what everybody was concerned about maintaining orthodoxy and at the same time acknowledging that the ESS people had a point so if you had to choose between the two I'm with the critics of ESS but I think ESS has something that has to be taken on board has to be you mean you mean the internet has polarized people to where you can't even admit the other side has a point I'm early err you commented on this and someone said you know if you put a thousand monkeys at a thousand keyboards and they typed for a thousand years eventually they would produce the works of Shakespeare that now thanks to the internet we know that's not true so what I did as so I draft I drafted this paper that I sent to you and it's affirmations and denials I sent it I think it went through something like nine drafts because I sent it to critics editors on both sides of the the 2016 debate so I sent it to people in every direction and I pretty much incorporated everything that you know well over 90 percent of the feedback I got I was able to incorporate into it and then at our at the last meeting of Knox presbytery in 2019 in the fall we finally we adopted this paper and and we forwarded it to our council meeting which is this this year in Chicago this coming fall and we're going to be the the whole denomination will be considering to either receive it or not our head or be polite you know what are we gonna do but as it stands now it's been it's been formally adopted by Knox presbytery and kicked up to Council okay.we Baptist understand any of that but that's okay we would have been done with it in 2016 they moved on other things that's that's the you guys don't know you don't you guys don't know how much committee life you're missing out oh man and we are not missing it at all let me assure you of that but anyway here's here's what I'd like to push back a little bit get some get some clarity let me give you some background I'm sure you're aware of this but this is I don't know why maybe maybe someone in giving you feedback did make reference this I don't know and maybe it's just simply my background and what I'm dealing with but as you know Calvin himself was critical of some post Nicene developments in regards to Trinitarian theology and he was because he was dealing with people like Sir Vedas he was dealing with Unitarians and and because what had you know Luther was very concerned that the Reformation would just give rise to just a Arceus and things like that and in some instances that was sort of true that there were people who began expressing all sorts of fundamental questions in regards to the doctrines of Trinity and so Calvin emphasized eight a particular term this is this is recognized by Murray by Warfield by everybody who's who's a recognized scholar of Calvin he emphasized the phrase Alto thais or Alto Fiat ace if you want to use the the that form of it but it is the idea that the Sun is God in and of himself in other words that his participation in the divine nature is immediate not mediated through someone else not secondhand not secondhand and so he felt this was absolutely necessary to the defense of the full deity of Christ and he connected it with what I think is one of the most important evidences from the new testament of the deity of Christ and that is the fact that the New Testament writers all across the spectrum identified Jesus as Yahweh I mean John does it the Hebrews chapter 1 verses 10 through 12 direct quotation Psalm 102 25 to 27 John doesn't John 1241 who did who dies ASC in his temple vision it was it was Jesus according to John 1241 these things I wrote in Romans 2 in Romans 10 votes Joel 232 he who calls on the name of Yahweh will be safe first Peter 3 the the passage on apologetics if you actually look at the context is is speaking of Yahweh so it's it's all over the place and Calvin saw that as saying look if the New Testament apostles are identifying Jesus as Yahweh in this intimate fashion then what is true of Yahweh is going to be true of the son as well and therefore you can't have Yahweh being only intermediately Yahweh so so out of a us I think is is a very important biblical exegetical element of the defense of the doctrine of the Trinity and again that's where I am because I'm having to do this with all sorts of people who don't even accept the authority of Scripture I'm having to demonstrate the consistency of my position I'm saying yes I'm taking my scriptures as a whole Sola scriptura and toda scriptura and this is what it leads us to I don't think a lot of the people in the egalitarian stuff that that's that's not where that's not their world that's not what they're necessarily running into so in light of my agreement with Calvin that the Sun is out off Thais then when we when we then ask the question does the New Testament give us warrant to look at not the Incarnation 'el decreed economic Trinity relationship for Father Son and spirit and draw all sorts of important I mean that's what that's what Philippians 2:5 3:11 is here's a sermon illustration you want humility of mind there's Jesus there is humility of mind as in par excellence and that's how we should we should approach one another in that way if we go beyond that section four of the Knox presbytery statement says and I'll read the first part of of section five if you don't mind if I read this for you we affirm that even as scripture reveals to us the names of father and son so God has placed real meaning in those words and our mortal relations such as earthly fathers and sons are analogical but real reflections of the eternal father and son the denial that goes with that is we deny that creaturely realities of finitude mortality or sin invalidate the archetypal nature of the Trinity with respect to man or the capacity and responsibility for us to learn fatherhood and sonship from their immutable archetypes in the Holy Trinity and then really quickly the affirmation of five we affirm that even as God is the father of the son and the author of all being so there is real Authority octo reaches within the Godhead so what where what is the what is the the goal here because there's just in passing in the beginning of five when it says even as God is the father of the son my my if I had seen this I would have said that that sounds like language I'm accustomed to hearing from the people that I'm going up against and in their mind they are distinguishing the term God there so that it's not appropriately applied to the son you're not doing that but it just it's just that that my auto thais emphasis makes me uncomfortable with with referring to the father as God separately from the Sun as Lord could EOS going back to Yahweh in in the Old Testament because that's me that's saying God the Father is the author of all being in son is that but not distinguishing that from the creative role of the son right right so what we're what we're saying there in in that passage first kudos on Jesus is Jehovah basically Jesus is Yahweh and in my mind the the essential thing has would have to do with whether or not the it's not whether Christ this excuse me the Lagos is divine not at second hand he doesn't have a hand-me-down deity right it's isn't it's not like that He is God in himself he's divine in himself he is essentially divine alright and this goes back to what I was saying earlier about the frictionless nests of of this so and I found Jonathan Edwards on the Trinity to be helpful in this in this respect so the father loves the son the son returns that love and following Augustine and I think Edwards would say the same thing the Holy Spirit is that mutual love I'm a Nicene guy and Western Western Nicene guys embrace the Filioque the spirit proceeds from the father Filioque and the son okay well how is that how is that done the issue is not whether Jesus is God in himself but rather how does it come about that He is God in himself not okay now when we get to the house we that's where we are really above our pay grade I think the I think the ecumenical Creed's prevent us from stipulating erroneous or heretical this is how it happened but at in the final analysis as you said the the Trinity is not something that we have any daily experience of in any other realm of life right it's a it's absolutely unique so I don't have any problem saying that Jesus is Yahweh Jesus is God in himself and he is eternally begotten by the father all right so he's he's Monica nice he's God sends his only begotten Son I take I take John as using Monica nice as a theological term of art where if he's he's saying that there is a unique relationship that the father has to the son the father begets and the son is begotten okay now that that does not have to be inconsistent with his the this deity of the son being essentially divine not derivatively divine right right that that's that's the real issue is that what what when we speak of begettal when we when we talk about what are called the opéra odd intra the internal operations of the Trinity and and these of course let's just be honest what we're dealing with here are the mechanisms that developed over time we're we're not going to a particular verse of scripture for the definition of opera ad intra and things like that what we're doing is we're drawing we're drawing the circle around the truth without necessarily defining the truth we're defining the things that aren't the truth excluding them to the outside because we're talking about something absolutely unique and there is far more biblical revelation upon which to go to discuss for example the relationship of the father and son in the incarnate state then there is in the eternal state they're just only a couple passages we can go to the draw aside the veil of eternity long enough for us to get a glimpse - for any of these things and those glimpses those glimpses ought to humble us not embolden us exactly oh I agree a thousand percent so with that with that in mind the question of the eternal generation of the son the problem with the term generation is that we automatically fill it with temporal meaning and it's not meant to be taken temporally it's meant to be taken only logically it's it's a relationship term not a temporality term and that that is that is next to impossible to communicate to our Muslim friends believe me I have to do it all the time so I can tell you it's very very hard but it you need to make the attempt anyways but where would you I am uncomfortable with the post Nicene father's that went to the point of saying that the because being in person are two different things we're talking about the being here the the one indivisible being of God that each of the divine persons shares fully and yet some post Nicene fathers went to the point of saying that eternal generation using that that language meant that the participation of the son in eternity past in the divine essence the divine being is mediated through the father where would where would I land on that yeah so I would say that if I would want to know what do you mean by mediated yeah and that's why I keep I keep coming back to this term frictionless because in when it when I look out in the world I whenever I see someone someone or something begotten there's a process and and this is the Arian heresy where there was a time when the Sun was not because in all my experience the you know areas might say in all my experience the begetter is always antecedent to the begotten right and and and so I carry that Freight I carry that baggage up into my discussion of of God the internal workings of the Godhead which I don't get to do right at the same time it's important that the the revealed things to us Father Son and spirit are not it's it's we're not Bart Ian's so we're not saying that God is holy other and and we have no comprehension of what he's like at all because he reveals himself God gives himself he reveals himself and he communicates himself and so when he says I am a father and if you've seen the son you've seen the father there are things that I'm invited to conclude from this and there are things that I'm prohibited from concluding from it okay right I'm prohibited from concluding friction turmoil a struggle or anything like that I'm prohibited from differentiating them the way an earthly father and a son would be differentiated I'm not allowed to do that but I'm a lot I must take on board something from it all right and a father is the font the father is the source now there is a sense in which the father is the source of the son just like in in Hebrews 1 where it says that that Jesus is the radiance of God's glory it's like the light source is the father and the light from the light source is the son he's the loom he's the luminosity of the father is Hebrews one uses it and so I want to say that's true that communicates some real truth and it's also true that the Sun is not got hand-me-down deity that's also true easy here's I this struck me and beef and at our age you know I need to give this out before it goes away something you said and then I was looking at this statement when it says God has placed real meaning in those words in our mortal relations such as early for earthly fathers and sons are analogical but real reflections of the eternal father and son this is what would help what do we learn about father and son and our relationships in humanity from the pre front from the eternal relationship of father and son that we would not also be able to learn from the incarnate revelation of the sent son the submissive son the one who is fulfilling the will the five not come to do my own will but the will of one one who sent me John 6 what what what do we learn from that other realm that we would not learn from the Incarnate realm I believe that you could learn everything essentially everything you needed to learn you could learn from the Incarnate one if you Jesus has to fill up you if you've seen me you've seen the father and so yeah if I look at the baptism of Jesus I I'm I'm looking at all that but like I said before I'm not just looking at Christ being baptized I'm looking at the fact that the father was pleased with him this is my son this is my well beloved son with whom I'm well pleased God was God was there he spoke he communicated he was prayer and so this the father in this the fact that Christ is incarnate in that setup I have to remember that the father is speaking in that moment and he's not incarnate the the father is the the father is pleased with him so if I if I look at you you've no doubt had this experience where you're counseling someone a new Christian and they they're learning the Lord's Prayer and every time they get to our Father they choke because of the experience they've had with father's right right well that's that's the way the world is and someone who's grown up with a healthy relationship with their earthly father is going to be far more in in far more of a good place when it comes to coming to Christ and beginning to pray to God their Heavenly Father as the author of Hebrews says we've all had early fathers who who gave us what for from time to time and and you know and and so we're being taught to analogically to make a cross over to say there's something I can get from here that applies over there but I can't just take everything across without okay we've been going a long time there was one one thing I want to talk with you about before we sign off and stuff I didn't know what our timeframe was either we got started little bit late but what does any of this have to do with the patriarchy and are you the source of the patriarchy yes I started it thank thank you thank you for giving me this opportunity to come to me well you might as well take take credit for it because you blame for it anyhow so it doesn't really matter but seriously I mean III don't get it this is sort of sort of a new thing to me but can can you please explain how in the world because if I understand you correctly all you've been saying all along is there are biblical revelations concerning the relationship of men and women in God's law that are good they're right and they're not what our current crazed society that can't tell a boy from a girl is telling us they are and that we shouldn't be ashamed of these things and that there is a distinction of roles revealed in Scripture and if we abandon this we're abandoning everything that the Bible tells us about God's creative purpose and all these things and I guess if you want to call that patriarchy okay what does that have to do with this is is the idea that to hold your position you must have some type of a commitment to a full-blown ESS position is that what people are saying I'm yeah yeah I I would kick at full-blown ESS position because I think like I said before there there are definite problems there all right but there is something that I think they're urging that's important for us to factor into this in the debate in the 2016 debate some of the people who were stridently opposing ESS in the name of Nicene orthodoxy also happened to be squishy on role relationships of men and women hmm so some of the loud voices attacking the ESS people were Galit Aryans or quasi egalitarian and and so the complementarian camp is has been wanting to say submission is not a dirty word when a wife when a wife submits to her husband that's not a dirty word because look Christians worship the triune God and we confess the full deity of Jesus Christ and we believe that he was submissive to the Father when he was sent into the world all the the takeaway argument that they're using there is that submission does not entail inequality and I think that that's true I think that that's true and and the essential lesson there and this goes back to your question the essential lesson there I could learn from Jesus the beloved son with whom God is well pleased submitted to the Father and nobody is gonna say that Jesus was degraded or mistreated or he will he's mistreated by the Romans and mistreated by his people but he was not mistreated by his father right he was he pleased his father he was pleasing his father when he went to the cross okay even in them even in the moment of dereliction in the cry of dereliction that was a sacrifice that had a sweet-smelling aroma to to God it was it was Jesus being obedient to death even to death on a cross so submission is not a dirty word and some a a patriarchal patriarchal list or a complementarian could say look it's in the Bible of course it's not a dirty word but some people have wanted to say no in in the Christian economy you can you can have the submission of one equal to another right so I I consider my wife fully my equal and she considers me fully her equal we are it's a marriage of equals and we believe in headship and Submission when we practice that would practice that so you can you could have that and that's where this whole thing cashes out that's where this thing becomes intensely practical and and I would flip the question around let's say let's say we give it into give the field entirely to the people who are allergic to any kind of formulation or any kind of dalliance with ESS or any kind of granting that they might have some good point in there somewhere but let's say you have that and we have robust Nicene orthodoxy period and and no ESS anywhere inside suppose someone says okay why do you say women are equal to their husbands where do you where can you find that in the Bible fine why would you say that wives are equal to their husbands well if you're asking me I this is this is where I would start I mean from my perspective I would start with the eighth circuit uh I mean I would start with the imago dei you start with with the creation ordinance of God's purpose and man and woman that woman is is meant to be the helpmate but HR connect dough does not mean an inferior but one that is corresponding to but different that we have direct biblical revelation on the glory of the woman the glory of her being made known to God that's all there that's why I from my perspective I'm like it really seems unnecessarily complicated to try to pull stuff out from an eternity past in a few texts and and make a roundabout application why are we to start what the Bible says a lot men and women but if you if you start with what the Bible says about men and women one of the first verses you're gonna run into is Genesis 1:27 and 28 and you just refer to it right male and female created he them in the image of God he created them so male and female together is the image of God if that's what we're talking about mm-hmm right so it is you can't say men and women are equal because they together bear the image of God but don't draw the conclusion that there's no image of God involved that would be that would be contradictory right right I just I just think that sometimes sometimes we get a little bit off the beaten path I think there's there's there's clear direct revelation in scripture on this subject and I wonder how many pages have been burned not talking about that and talking about other issues it's not that this subject is not important I'm it's it's been very valuable in getting people to have a better understanding of what the doctrines of Trinity actually is and and hopefully we haven't left everybody just sitting in the weeds as we've been discussing the Opera ad intra and and everything else hopefully that's that's helpful to everybody and I I can't help the folks that are just not gonna listen to anything we have to say because we're just closet heretics anyways there's nothing to do about that but I think they're gonna I think they're gonna click into this just to see your sweater again well that's that's very very true before before before we wrap up and I'm starting to wonder if maybe you know if we if we schedule debate in the future maybe you know I've gotten into the practice since 2006 so this I wasn't doing this back in when we when we did our debate in Los Angeles but I've got in the practice of giving my my opponents say a gift and so you know you never know you might end up with the Coogee sweater of your own well and in retaliation I might work yes made rich very very happy over there he's an anti coogee eight but on a serious level just just wrapping up and leaving those issues aside just on a personal level tomorrow is as we're recording this tomorrow is January 10th 2020 which will mean that will be the ten year anniversary to the day when my mother passed away and I'm not sure how to observe those things and things like it's it's a until you experience it yourself it's a it's a strange strange feeling I know that your father is still alive but he's very very aged and your your helping in his care is that is that correct right we're staying with them right right yeah and I think your mother has has passed away yeah she passed away the same year your mom did really 2010 2010 okay yeah so right around the same times reflect for a moment you know I I'm very thankful it's it's strange but let me just ask you can you still hear your mom's voice yes yeah so can I so can i when I when I think of almost anybody else I knew in 2010 unless I still know them I can't remember what their voice was but I don't I don't know that we ever I don't I do not want to forget what her voice sounded like and maybe maybe sons can't but my parents were married for was over 53 years I forget the exact number I remember I took them out for their 50th anniversary that was the first time they'd ever been in a limo and I took not a fancy restaurant and and that was that was that was great to be able to do that that type of thing but we live I remember when and you know summer when when summer went to a public high school because she'd been going to Christian high school and she said she wanted her unbelievers straight up she said but she she came home early on she said I am the only girl in my PE class that lives with her natural parents the only one and when I think of the the five decades that my parents were married and how rare that is today reflect for a moment if you will this is something you've written on a lot how can how can this society in which we live in any way ever flourish if we do not recognize the vital importance of the stability and the and the insight that was given to me that I was able to have a father and a mother my natural father and mother and until might my dad still alive but until her death I mean that's that is a that is a tremendous blessing right and it's it's a tremendous blessing and it's and it's something that secures the kids and not having it destabilizes the kids you know so I'm reading a book right now I forgotten the name of the author but primal scream and and it it has to do with a lot of the word of the the the word of our decade now is identity and people are people are flailing for identity and and so they're latching on to arbitrary things as they flail and this is and this is where a lot of our tribalism and our factionalism enter and the hatred that people have for one another in our cultural debates and so forth that's where a lot of this is coming from the fact that they these people didn't grow up in stable homes they didn't grow up in places that that secured them or anchored them the way they ought to be the way human beings created the image of God need to be anchored I'm the greatest earthly blessing that God gave to me early on was parents who loved the Lord loved one another loved us and did that did that consistently and it's it's quite remarkable that you know when when I was a kid in the 50s I didn't know anybody who came from a divorced oh right so so I was you and I are unique now with that story but when I was a kid that was commonplace it was really a new it was really unusual to have some to have broken homes everyone I knew was came from an intact home and and there's something my dad was one of six brothers six six brothers all of them lived full lives married to their wife you know they're the first wife that know no divorces among the six boys and my dad had four kids and their ever no no divorces the the next generation no divorces its it's a God's blessing is is generational and this is one of the things I learned from my dad who you'll be pleased to discover as a Baptist so wise man he's an insight he's a Baptist who knows how to read generational promises in Deuteronomy and that's what that's what it says so it was that was just something and that was an anchor in my life yeah there's no no question about it I see the world the way I do in part because of that gift that they gave me large large part oh yeah oh yeah no toys about it it's a it's a it's a great heritage to have and we're not in any way shape or form saying that God doesn't use people who come from broken homes or cannot heal those things not not making that statement at all but when a society specifically decides to devalue and demean the family and marriage and everything that it means that's that's God's judgment upon a people have had a tremendous amount of light and we and it's it's an amazing thing so yeah I was just thinking about that that's coming up tomorrow and you know 10 years and it's so I guess it's been same amount of time for you approximately since since your mom passed and you know you you probably had the same experience I've had but there's been so many times I've traveled someplace done something spoken at some place and I would have called my mom she would have just been so excited you know I have a picture of me preaching in Spurgeon's pulpit and a metropolitan Tabernacle in London that was a couple years you know that type of thing just she never got to travel and doing of course she would have been scared to death when I was debating in mosques in South Africa that's why with the Lord sir community because she couldn't have handled that anyways but but yeah there's there's just so many time that you go you know lord thank you so much for you know what you've what you provided and and then you think about you and your own kids and then your grandchildren and you go all goodness have I you know have I given them even a bit of what I should have given to them how many times I've been selfish and and things like that yeah important stuff and it makes us makes us think about the future and the past and proverbs says my son remember the law of your mother yeah that's true that's true and and and I do and I do it sticks with you Doug thank you very very much I thank you you know I don't know what the future holds but I'm certainly open to future conversations I enjoy them and I realized they're going to be people are going to pick apart every single pause everything single syllable I just pray that God will grant them a life that will be of greater joy but till then I appreciate the time god bless you all right you too you

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 33,519

Rating: 4.8682475 out of 5

Keywords: Sweater Vest Dialogues, Douglas Wilson, James White, Doug Wilson, patriatchy, trinity, the trinity, christian trinity, theologian, debate, canon press, james white sweater vest, doug wilson sweater vest, douglas wilson sweater vest, james white doug wilson, federal vision, the patriarchy, feminism, christian theology

Id: bdANHJFRJuM

Length: 71min 50sec (4310 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Is1tJustMeOr]

Are there English subtitles available??? Understanding American is hard. Understanding Americans speaking Greek is even worse!

[u/nebular_narwhal]

I honestly don’t know why this is getting downvoted. This is a big brain post. Less-than-a-doctor James White and c-word-Master Doug Wilson are pretty humorous to many of the reformed folk around here.