Summer in the Systematics: Theology Proper (Part 10)

Transcript

JRS 20
09/04/2022
Summer in the Systematics: Theology Proper (Part 10)
Various Verses
Jesse Randolph

Alright, well, it’s great to be with you here again this evening for our tenth and final installment in “Summer in the Systematics.” Tonight, it’s going to be, admittedly, well, let me walk back a step. I have heard quite a bit of feedback about the series, that it seems like we’re sitting in a seminary class. And that’s by design actually. That’s actually what I’d like to do each summer. To take us into some of these deeper dives into these studies. These doctrinal studies of who God is and who Christ is and who the Spirit is. And what the bible is. And really look at these amazing doctrines of the Christian faith, through a systematic lens. We’re not doing that every Sunday night throughout the year, but just for a season every summer. So, as I’ve said from the beginning, I’d like to do this every summer, Lord willing, unless as we heard this morning, that the Rapture happens before. The goal would be to keep teaching through these lessons, systematically. And then we’ll have normal expositional series throughout the rest of the year on Sunday evenings.

So, I say all that as background, because even tonight’s going to feel a little deeper in some ways, in some of the doctrines that we’re going to go into, as we wrap up the series, in looking at the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity and some of the interesting studies in problematic areas that… places people have gone astray in studying the Trinity.

So, as we wrap up our time on the Trinity, we’re going to talk about two major topics tonight. In fact, these are the two blanks on your worksheets. I’ll just give these to you up front. The first blank on your worksheet would be this, Trinitarian Relations, and the second blank on your worksheet would be this, Trinitarian Heresies. So, I’m going to try and do this in less than an hour. But we’re going to talk first about Trinitarian Relations. That is, how the persons of the Godhead -- Father, Son and Spirit -- relate to one another. And then we’re going to talk about Trinitarian Heresies, where many have gone adrift, astray. And led countless souls to condemnation, ultimately, if they do not have the Trinitarian God of scripture right, the same God who reveals Himself through Christ, through the gospel and the like. So, those are our two blanks, Trinitarian Relations, Trinitarian Heresies.

Before we get into those two points, into the meat of it though, I want to make a few, I hope, very straight forward statements of Trinitarian orthodoxy. Based on what we’ve already gone through so far in this series. Anyone who calls themselves a Christian would have to affirm at least these three truths. One, there is one God. There is one God. [Deuteronomy 6:4], “Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” Truth number two, God exists in three persons. Which we covered in some detail, last week. Truth number three, each of the three persons of the Godhead is truly and fully and equally God.
And don’t worry, we’re going to cover these three, we’re going to come back to these three truths a few times tonight. There is one God. God exists in three persons. And each of the three persons of the Godhead is truly and fully and equally God. If you can affirm those three truths, then you have an orthodox view of the Trinity. And yet, many open questions still remain. Which is what we’re going to address tonight.

So, we’re going to start with “Trinitarian Relations.” We’re going to start by looking this evening at how the three persons of the Trinity, while distinct from one another, relate to one another. And as we jump into it, I want to put before you a quote from Louis Berkhof, who is going to show us the tallness of our task here this evening. Especially when we’re trying to do it in about twenty minutes for this first part. He says: “The Trinity is a mystery. . .man cannot comprehend it and make it intelligible. It is intelligible in some of its relations and modes of manifestation, but unintelligible in its essential nature. . .The real difficulty lies in the relation in which the persons in the Godhead stand to the divine essence and to one another; and this is a difficulty which the Church cannot remove, but only try to reduce to its proper proportion by a proper definition of terms. It has never tried to explain the mystery of the Trinity but only sought to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity in such a manner that the errors which endangered it were warded off.” That’s what’s before us tonight. Attempting through scripture to understand how the Persons of the Trinity relate to one another, while at the same time “warding off”, to use Berkhof’s term, any errors which have compromised or corrupted this doctrine over the years.

Now, as we start our discussion of Trinitarian Relations, it is important that we lay down some very clear guidelines. Because if we drift too far one way or the other, we do run the risk of drifting outside of Christian orthodoxy. So, let’s begin by looking into some of the basics.

First, we need to affirm and understand that each Person of the Triune Godhead (we’ve already covered this in different terms) is fully and completely God. That is, each Person of the Godhead has the entire fullness of God’s being in Himself. None of the Persons of the Godhead is partly God, or one third God. But each instead, is fully and wholly God. Which means, that when we refer to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together, we’re not saying or suggesting that any of the three Persons of the Godhead is greater or lesser than any of the other Persons of the Godhead. Rather, each Person of the Godhead, of the Trinity, is fully and equally God. We see that picked up in the ancient Athanasian Creed, which says: “. . .we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance [or essence]. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.” So, each Person of the Godhead, of the Trinity, we can see here from this old creed, is fully God. And each Person of the Trinity fully possesses the divine essence. So, that’s the first thing we affirm. That each Person of the Triune Godhead is fully and completely God.

Second, we also affirm this, that real distinctions exist between the Persons of the Godhead. And how do we best think of those two realities, the singularity of the divine essence and the tri-personality of the Godhead? How do we hold each of these truths in our hands as we attempt to comprehend the divine? Well, we do so by pointing out the distinctions between the Father and the Son and the Spirit. We note carefully that those distinctions are not distinctions in being. Again, each Person of the Trinity, as God, is ontologically equal. Meaning, equal in their essence. But instead, we do highlight the differences between the Persons of the Trinity, in terms of their different relationships. The different roles they play. There are no differences between the Persons of the Trinity. I’ll say it over and over, just to make sure we’re being clear about orthodoxy here. There are no differences between the Persons of the Trinity, in terms of their properties, their attributes, or their essence. Rather, the differences relate to how the three Persons of the Trinity relate externally to things like creation and in the process of redemption, and how they relate to one another internally, within the Godhead. How the Persons of the Trinity relate to things like, creation and redemption, externally, are what theologians call the “ad extra,” external relations, or works of the Trinity. How they relate to one another -- Father, Son, Spirit -- how they relate to one another are known as the “ad intra,” internal relations of the Trinity. We’re going to spend a little time on both tonight.

We’ll start with the “ad extra” works. And we’re going to look at the “ad extra,” external relations or works of the Trinity in creation and redemption. I told you it was going to be a deeper dive tonight as we wind down. Well, with respect to creation, scripture reveals to us that there are different roles or functions carried out by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in creation. For instance, God the Father spoke the words which brought our world and our universe into being. All the “let there be” statements here in Genesis 1, the “let there be(s), the “let the”, like ‘let the waters teem with the fish,’ “Let Us make man in Our image”. Those are all the words of God the Father.

But scripture also teaches us that God the Son was the one who carried out God the Father’s creative decree. John 1:3, “All things were made through Him”, that’s referring to God the Son, “and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Or Colossians 1:16, also speaking of Christ, God the Son, “By him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things were created through him and for him.” 1 Corinthians 8:6, also highlights this distinction, “there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” Hebrews 1:2, “in these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” So, God the Son here, is portrayed as carrying out the Father’s creative decree.

And then, of course, there is the work of the Holy Spirit in creation. You know, He, God the Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, is described as hovering over the face of the waters at creation. Genesis 1:2, “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” Which is some sort of reference to God the Spirit being present at creation, involved in creation. The point is that all three Persons of the Godhead were involved with and functioning uniquely in the work of creation.

The same is true with respect to the work of redemption or salvation. Meaning, we see all three Persons of the Godhead carrying out specific roles and works in what happened in our salvation. Scripture teaches that God the Father planned out the program of redemption when He sent His Son into the world. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” That’s all rooted in God the Father’s love for the world. Galatians 4:4, “But when the fullness of time came, God” that’s speaking of the Father, “sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.” Ephesians 1:3-4, we see something similar – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He,” God the Father, “chose us in Him,” God the Son, “before the foundation of the world.” So, we see God the Father functioning uniquely in redemption and salvation just through a few of these passages.

But then, we also see the Son in His incarnation obeying the Father, as He accomplished redemption of our behalf. John 6:38, the Lord Jesus speaking here, says, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” We have to remember that it was not God the Father who came and died for our sins. Nor was it God the Spirit. No, it was God the Son.

And then we know, upon the Lord Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father, it was God now the Holy Spirit, who was sent by the Father and the Son, to apply redemption to us. John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” Speaking of the Helper, the Holy Spirit is the one who is sent by the Father and the Son. We’ll get more into that just a bit later. John 16:7, the words of our Lord again, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I” that’s the Lord there, “will send Him to you.” So, we know that the Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son.

We also see from scripture that it’s the Holy Spirit that regenerates us. John 3:5, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” We know that it’s the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us. Romans 8:13, “if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” We know it’s the Holy Spirit who empowers us for service. Acts 1:8, but “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

Ok, so what we’ve established so far, is that while each of the Persons of the Trinity is fully God, and each is fully equal in their essence and in their attributes -- we’ve also seen that, never-the-less, the Persons of the Godhead differ in their relationships, specifically to creation, and to redemption.

Well, standing behind those realities, the different ways Persons of the Trinity relate to creation and redemption, are the eternal realities of how the Persons of the Godhead relate to one another. Those are the “ad intra” realities I spoke of just a few minutes ago. And one of those eternal realities is that God the Father is eternally the Father. God the Son is eternally the Son. God the Spirit is eternally the Spirit. These identities and relationships are eternal. They did not develop or morph over time. No, we see the eternality of these relationships in places like Ephesians 1:3-4, which we just looked at, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” That same God chose us in eternity past. And He chose us in Christ. Those words alone signify some sort of distinction between God the Father and God the Son.

And it also signifies a divine ordering. What you see here is God the Father is the one who’s doing the choosing. And further, is the fact that God the Father is the one who gave His only Son and then sent His Son into the world, as we see in the next verse, John 3:17. These passages tell us that there is this Father-Son relationship that has existed into eternity past, before Christ came into the world. No, you see, God the Son did not become the Son when the Father sent Him into the world. Rather, God the Father sent into the world the One who was already the Son, who is eternally the Son. Galatians 4:4, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son.” Not the one that had just become the Son, or the one that recently became the Son. No, He sent forth His Son, the eternal Son of God.

We also see the eternal relations of the Father and the Son and the natural priority that is given to the Father in passages that speak about the creation of all things. The Father is spoken of as the One, as I mentioned earlier, who creates through the Son. Hebrews 1:2 says, it was through the Son that God made the world. This indicates there’s this relationship between Father and Son which existed before creation began. Note that it does not say that the Son and the Spirit created through the Father. It’s the other way around. And again, what this reveals to us is some sort of eternally distinct ordering within the Trinity. Put another way, the different functions that we see between the Father and the Son and the Spirit demonstrated in creation -- they reveal and they are an outworking of an eternal relationship existing between each of the Persons of the Godhead. One that has always existed throughout eternity, and will always exist. The Father is unique in how He relates as Father to the Son and the Spirit. The Son is unique in how He relates as Son to the Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit is unique in how He relates as Spirit to the Father and the Son.

Ok. Now, we’ve been touching more generally on the reality that the Father, Son and Spirit have these eternal “ad intra” relationships with each other which transcend and lie behind the Trinity’s “ad extra” works of creation and redemption. Now, for centuries… (and it would be presumptuous of me to think I can nail this in ten minutes) because for centuries theologians have wrestled with the nature of those “ad intra” relationships between Father, Son, and Spirit. And in doing so, they’ve wrestled with terminology, suitable to our human intellect and language, to better understand the “ad intra,” those internal relationships within the Godhead. Which takes us right into our discussion of the eternal generation of the Son. And the eternal procession of the Spirit.

We’ll start with the eternal generation of the Son, before we go into the eternal procession of the Spirit. What do we mean when we use a phrase like this, ‘eternal generation of the Son’? Let’s begin saying, very clearly what we do not mean. To say that the Father has eternally generated the Son, does not mean that the Son was somehow created by the Father in eternity past. Because we know that Christ is fully God. And that God is truly eternal. There was no time, ever, at which God the Son did not exist. Contrary to the teachings of groups like the Mormons, Christ, God the Son, is very God. So, what do we mean then, by a phrase like “eternal generation,” if we don’t mean that Jesus was created by God?
Here’s how MacArthur and Mayhue put it in their biblical doctrine. They’re many other theologies which have similar definitions. This one’s just the simplest to grasp I think. It says, “The eternal, necessary, and self-differentiating act of God the Father”, this is the definition of eternal generation, “by which he generates the personal subsistence of the Son and thereby communicates to the Son the entire divine essence.” I get it. That may not be immediately helpful and understandable without a bit of context and background. So, lets break it down a little bit further.

Let’s start with the root word of “generation,” “eternal generation.” When we say, “eternal generation,” what do we mean by the phrase or the word “generation”? Well, the word “generation” comes from this Greek word, “genes,” which rightly translated means “begotten.” And at various points in scripture, we do see references to Jesus being the “mono genes,” the “only begotten” Son of God. John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten”, there’s our word, “from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:18, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God”, that’s our term, “who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” John 3:16, the one we’ve all heard, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His,” mono genes, “only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

What we see in these passages then, is that God the Son, Christ, is God the Father’s “only begotten” Son. And what these passages and others like Hebrews 1:3 teach us, is that, of course, though God the Son is not a created being, there is some sense in which He is “from” the Father. John 1:1-2 says, “He is the Word of God.” John 5:26 says, “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.” 1 Corinthians 8:6, “Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” I appreciate the following quote from Burce Ware on this point. He writes: “Since the Father is really Father, as opposed to being Father nominally (i.e., in name only), and since the Father is eternal Father, then it follows that he must really have a Son, who is genuinely from Him (otherwise He isn’t really Father), and that this Son from Him must likewise be eternally from Him (otherwise He isn’t eternal Father).” So, what all this tells us, is that when we speak of the eternal generation of the Son, we are acknowledging and affirming what scripture teaches, which is that in some sense, the Son is “from” the Father.

Francis Turretin, writing in the mid-17th century, summarized this doctrine of eternal generation nicely, I think, when he explained it this way. He said: “As all generation indicates a communication of essence on the part of the begetter to begotten”, that being Father to Son, “(by which the begotten becomes like the begetter and partakes of the same nature with him), so this wonderful generation is rightly expressed as a communication of essence from the Father”, that’s John 5 language “(by which the Son possesses indivisibly the same essence with him and is made perfectly like him).”

So, what conclusions can we draw at this point concerning the Son’s “begottenness” from the Father? There are a few. First, it’s important to note that the Son is of the same nature as the Father. I understand. When you teach this material, you’re toeing that line. And I’m not, I want to be very clear, as we close on this topic, that the Son is of the same nature as the Father. Just as the Father begets a Son like Himself, God the Father, scriptures teach, has begotten a Son like Himself. You know, we fathers pass along our nature to our sons and our daughters. God the Father, in some sense, that we can’t truly understand, has done so to God the Son, in some eternal and transcendent and perfect way.

Second, here’s another key takeaway that we need to note. The Son is distinct from the Father, in this eternal act of generation. Only one, the Father, does the begetting. Only one, the Son, is begotten. We can’t get that order reversed!

Third, there is a naturally given and biblically revealed order in the relationship between the Father and the Son. And the order is always this, we see it in the scripture, like in 1 Corinthians 8:6, it’s from the Father and through the Son. That’s why many in church history have referred to God the Father as the “fountain of divinity”. Not that He is ontologically superior in any way, but that it’s tracking with the language of the scripture, that’s from the Father through the Son. Here is 1 Corinthians 8:6, for us “there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”

So, we’ve got some of the basic terminology down, in terms of the Father’s eternal generation of the Son. Next we need to ask the question, what does it mean when we say, the Father eternally generates the Son? What is happening in this process? Is it a process? What is the active generation look like? Is it an act? What does it entail? For some… (I think those, by the way, are the wrong questions to ask and I’ll explain why in a second.) For some, the idea of eternal generation means that the Father is eternally communicating to the Son the divine essence, so that the Son shares fully in every attribute of God the Father. Adherents to that view would cite John 5:26, “just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself.” Again, this does not mean that God the Father is superior ontologically, or essentially, or in any sense. Instead, what its adherents to this view would hold is that the Father’s communication of the divine essence to the Son is so complete that the Son is as Hebrews 1:3 says, in the exact imprint or representation of the Father’s nature. And because this act of generation is eternal, the Son was not created, never created, but existed eternally as the “only begotten” Son. That’s one view.

The other view is that eternal generation means that the Father is the source of the personal distinctions between Father and Son, and by extension the Spirit, but He’s not the source of their divine essence. And that was a view that John Calvin held. I personally hold to the first view. I think it’s more in line with the language, “only begotten”. And I think it lines up with what we see in Hebrews 1:3, the idea of God the Son being the exact imprint of the Father’s nature.

So, I’m dumping a ton on you right now. I’m going to give you just a few summary statements here, of how one would build the case for eternal generation of the Son, if we can say it that way. Keeping in mind of course, that this is a doctrine, I’m convinced, that is rooted in scripture. The eternal God is eternally triune, with three divine Persons -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- sharing equally in the Godhead. The first and second Persons of the Godhead are eternally the Father and eternally the Son. This quote is from Gruden, I missed the reference here, “A Father-Son relationship presupposes begetting. Fathers beget children.” The second Person of the Trinity is described in the New Testament as the Father’s “begotten” Son. Because Jesus is eternally God, His “begottenness” from the Father can best be understood, and this is the key here, as “an eternal act of divine self-differentiation,” that is, true God from true God. “An eternal act of divine self-differentiation.” The doctrine of eternal generation simply helps us to understand how these eternal Persons of the Triune God… helps us understand the distinction between them.

Well, we’ve hit the doctrine of eternal generation pretty hard, but we’re not quite done yet. What about the eternal procession of the Spirit? We’ve seen that the Father eternally begets the Son. And we’ve seen the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. Now we’re going to see that the Father and that the Son eternally breathed forth the Spirit, which from the Father and Son’s perspective is called “spiration”. And that the Spirit is eternally breathed forth from the Father and the Son, from the Spirit’s perspective is called “procession.” The Spirit proceeds, eternally from the Father and the Son. Unlike God the Son, the Spirit is not begotten. Rather, His eternal mode of subsistence is “procession.”

Here again is MacArthur and Mayhew, similar to eternal generation, “the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son describes”, here are those words again, “the eternal, necessary, and self-differentiating act of the Father and the Son by which they spirate the personal subsistence of the Spirit and thereby communicate to Him the divine essence.” It’s this eternal act of spiration, or procession, which distinguishes God the Father and God the Son from God the Spirit. Now, scripture doesn’t define the difference between “generation” and “procession”. MacArthur and Mayhue highlight this, they say, “the terms begetting and procession are purposeful and important, even if we cannot fully explain how the two modes of subsistence differ from each other.” Admittedly, these are theological terms, “procession”, “spiration” and “generation.” They are designed to help us understand how the three Persons eternally relate with one another.

John Owen also threw his hands up. This may be what you feel like doing tonight. He said, “Who can declare the generation of the Son, the procession of the Spirit, or the difference of the one from the other?” But the terminology again, of “generation” and “procession,” does fit with what the scriptures teach about the Son and the Spirit. And importantly, to highlight those distinct relationships within the Godhead.

I’m going to quote at length from Scott Swain, a modern-day Trinitarian theologian. Who I think ably summarizes this doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, and how it differs from the doctrine of eternal procession of the Spirit. He writes this, “According to the Bible’s basic Trinitarian grammar, these relations of origin, and the ‘personal properties’ that label them (paternity, filiation, spiration), are the only real distinctions that exist within the one and simple God. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son. While these distinct personal ways of being the one God require absolutely no distinction between the persons of the trinity and the one God, thus preserving divine simplicity, they also exhibit how the persons of the Trinity are truly distinct from each other – by the manner in which they communicate God’s simple essence to each other: ‘As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). The person of the Father eternally communicates his simple essence to the person of the Son in eternal generation. In similar fashion, just as the Father and the Son have life in themselves, so they have granted the Spirit to have life in himself. The persons of the Father and the Son eternally communicate their simple essence to the Spirit in eternal spiration.”

I’m looking at the clock, and I need to hurry. We’re going to jump ahead. If you want to see these slides later, you can look them up. We’re going to go right to “Trinitarian Heresies.” I’m feeling the heads in the room about to explode. Mine included. So, let’s move into “Trinitarian Heresies.”

And I’m going to, real quick, sidebar on this. Because I know I’ve said it, maybe six, seven weeks ago. I know that as I’m quoting a lot of theologians specifically, and as we’re talking about theological concepts related to the Trinity, and the doctrine of God, and theology proper -- I know, I’m aware, that I am citing many different theologians of different stripes, that we would ultimately differ with, in a lot of different ways. But the reality is, sitting here today in the year 2022, the theologians who have done the best work on the doctrine of God are theologians in different camps than ours. And I lay before anybody in this room, who is theologically inclined, and holds to the hermeneutic that we hold to, dispensational specifically, to do more work in these fields. Because right now, these fields are occupied by men and theologians who we would disagree. Like these would be men who would not agree with Duane’s teaching this morning on the rapture. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve got the doctrine of God wrong. It does mean that they’ve got their eschatology wrong. So, my challenge to anybody here, who likes to study and likes to dive deep, and likes to research and likes to write, would be those people who, from our perspective and our camp -- start making contributions to this field. Ok, I’m off of my soapbox.

On to “Trinitarian Heresies.” We’re going to cover various heresies, both ancient and modern, which have arisen concerning God, and specifically His Triune nature, over the course of two millennia of church history. Let’s go back though to our three foundational truths. There is one God. God exists in three Persons. Each of the three Persons of the Godhead is truly and fully and equally God. Well, over the centuries, not all who have borne the name of Christ have affirmed all three of those truths. And the result is that various errors related to the Trinity have crept into the church. And each, at some level, has eaten away at one of those three pillars of Trinitarian theology. We’re going to cover three of these heretical views on the Trinity, in the time that we have left tonight. I’ve got to limit it to three. We’re going to talk about “Tritheism.” We’re going to talk about “Modalism.” And we’re going to talk about “Arianism.”

We’ll start with Tritheism. As the name implies, this would be a view that undermines what the bible teaches about God being one. This would be a view which would undermine the biblical reality that God is of a singular, simple, undivided essence. This would be a view instead, that the Christian Godhead is made up of three distinct gods. Not three distinct Persons, which would be a statement that falls within the guardrails of Christian orthodoxy. But three distinct “gods.” Tritheism, denies the unity of the essence of God, and holds to there being three distinct “gods.”

Now, historically, there have not been too many people recorded in the pages of church history, who have held to a tritheistic worldview. And why not? I think it’s likely that there haven’t been many outspoken tritheists because Tritheism so closely resembles the polytheistic paganism that first century Jews and later, Christians, were seeking to distance themselves from. The Christians and the Jews before them were affirming the singularity and the oneness of the one true and living God. It would have been an odd turn, to go from outright paganism to monotheistic worship of the one God, only to go back and worship three gods. Even if those three gods, according to this worldview, would be God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. So, tritheism really has not been a major threat to Trinitarian orthodoxy over two millennia of church history. Nevertheless, there are some important things to note about tritheism, that’s why I bother bringing it up.

The first is this: though there are not really any modern-day tritheists, at least outwardly, or at least admittedly or intentionally, the reality is, as Wayne Grudem has pointed out: “many evangelicals today unintentionally tend toward tritheistic views of the Trinity, recognizing the distinct personhood of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but seldom being aware of the unity of God as one undivided being.” I mean, I’m sure that you’ve experienced this in your thought life about God, or even your prayer life toward God. When you start drifting in the direction of thinking that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are somehow these disconnected sources of deity, who are each responsible for managing some distinct part of your Christian walk. But who otherwise have little or no relationship to one another. That can lead to even in your prayer life, you know. Father, forgive my sins -- Jesus take the wheel -- Spirit lead. We’re dividing up the divine in your mind. Completely forgetting that the three persons of the Trinity are of and share a single and simple divine essence. What would the remedy be for that potential, inadvertent drift into Tritheism? Well, the remedy would be to go back to what we’ve looked at a couple of different times in this series. To look at the unity of God. To remember this simplicity of God. The simplicity of the Godhead. To meditate on the fact, as we see in Deuteronomy 6:4, “The Lord is one.” So, that’s a bit about Tritheism.

The bigger one in our day would be “Modalism.” Modalism goes by a number of names and takes a number of different forms. Going back in history, modalism would have been rooted in ancient heresy knows as Monarchianism. And Monarchianism, that would teach that God is a uni-personal, meaning single person, being. “Monarchianism” conflicts directly with the doctrine of the Trinity. And why? Well, because it denies that God exists as three Persons. This view instead maintains that God is not only one God, which we would affirm, but that God is only one Person, which we would deny. Monarchianism was rejected as heretical by Christians in the second century. But Monarchianism lives on today through groups like the Unitarian church, which is openly non-Trinitarian. Monarchianism, in some form, lives on in the Muslim religion, whose focus in worship, albeit false worship, would be on Allah and Allah alone.

Two versions of Monarchianism, by the way are Adoptionism and what our main heading is here, Modalism. Let’s start with “Adoptionism.” Adoptionism was an early form of Monarchianism. And what Adoptionism taught was that Jesus was not co-eternal with the Father, and therefore, not eternally God. But instead, was adopted (hence the term) by God the Father, either at his baptism or at His ascension. At which point He became the Son of God. Obviously, that’s a problem. Denying the deity of Christ is automatically an anti-Trinitarian heresy. John Walvoord is helpful on this point, he says, “no attack on the person of Christ can be made without attacking the doctrine of the trinity, as they stand and fall together.” So Adoptionism was rightly condemned as heresy early on in church history.

I mentioned there are two forms of Monarchianism, one is Adoptionism and the other is Modalism, which is also called “Sabellianism.” See, a man named Sabellius was an early proponent of Modalism, and that’s why you have the two terms here. And what Modalism teaches at its core, is that there are not three Persons in the Godhead. Instead, there is one Person in the Godhead, they would say, who sometimes manifests Himself as the Father. Who sometimes manifests Himself as the Son. And who sometimes manifests Himself as the Spirit. And typically, Modalism will teach that in ages past God manifested Himself as the Father. While during the incarnation He manifested Himself as the Son. And subsequently manifested Himself, for instance in our age, as the Holy Spirit. So, one of the key tenets of Modalistic teaching is that God cannot exist in more than one mode at any one time. The Son and the Spirit cannot cooperate. The Father and the Son cannot work together. The Spirit and the Father never join forces. Rather, only one mode of God may exist and function at any given time.

Modalism is anti-Trinitarian. Modalism, in any anti-Trinitarian belief, is ultimately heretical. So, Modalism, we could say with confidence, is heresy. Now, the Modalist heresy, you can almost picture this tree I’m trying to draw in my mind and lay out for you. Even the Modalist heresy can break down even further to other heretical teachings over the centuries. It’s taken a number of forms. I’m going to just give you two more, there are two forms of Modalism I want to highlight.

One would be “Patripassianism.” I told you guys this was going to be a heavy one. This is a form of Modalism, and according to this teaching… “Patri” is the word for Father, the Latin term for Father… It was God the Father… “Passion,” we’re thinking of the passion of Christ here, right? It was God the Father who appeared in a separate mode, or manifestation, as God the Son. And He actually appeared, not God the Son. It was actually God the Father who suffered and died on the cross at Calvary. Patripassianism. It wasn’t… I’ll put it this way, it wasn’t God the Son who bled out on the cross for our sins. It was God the Father. Patripassianism rightly was condemned as heresy in the fourth century. And we don’t have too many that are holding to this view today.

The other way though, that we’ve seen Modalism rear its ugly head in our day, would be through the teachings of “oneness Pentecostalism”. Like the old Modalists of the past, oneness Pentecostalism teaches today that the three Persons of the Trinity, who we know as the three Persons of the Trinity, are manifestations of God, individual manifestations of one God who exists as one Person, hence the phrase, “oneness Pentecostalism”.

You may have heard of a preacher named T.D. Jakes? He began making inroads into middle-of-the-road evangelicalism, really a decade and a half or so ago. He started to get more popular and was given more of a platform by certain churches and certain pastors. T.D. Jakes is a loud and vivacious preacher. He can, for some, be a very engaging man to listen to. You know, he screams, and he sweats, and he shakes when he’s up there preaching. He is definitely an attention-grabbing preacher. Well, T.D. Jakes is a heretic. Because T.D. Jakes is an open Modalist. He denies basic Trinitarian truth. And one cannot deny basic Trinitarian truth and still be considered a Christian. T.D. Jakes, his church is called The Potter’s House, and here’s their statement of belief, “There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three”, not Persons, “manifestations: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” That’s the important catchphrase there, “manifestations”. Whereas historical Christianity and sound doctrinal statements would say that God exists eternally as three Persons, Jakes refers to those Persons as manifestations, or to use the old term, “modes”, that’s Modalism. It’s heresy. It expressly denies the Trinity.

Henry Clarence Thiessen, writing on Modalism many years ago, said this: “this is in reality a denial of the doctrine of the trinity, for these are not distinctions in the essence, but three qualities or relationships in one and the same person.”

So, we’ve covered Modalism. We’ve covered Tritheism. Next up is “Arianism.” Which is really a subcategory of a broader category of heretical teachings known as “Subordinationism.” Subordinationism is an anti-Trinitarian view, because what it teaches is that God the Son is somehow lesser, ontologically speaking, in His essence than God the Father. In the words of Robert Letham, subordinationism is problematic because it “argues for gradations of deity,” he says. Gradations of deity. According to subordinationism, in its purest form, going back many centuries, there are “greater Gods”, namely God the Father, and “lesser Gods”, God the Son and God the Spirit, within the Trinity. And the most historically problematic and historically recognizable version of subordinationism is Arianism.

Arianism, which is named for a fourth-century Libyan heretic named Arius, who’s famous for this quote, “there was a time”, he’s speaking of Christ here, “when he was not.” In other words, Arius held that God the Son is not co-eternal with God the Father. Instead, if Arius believed that God the Son was God the Father’s first creation, and that through Him, the Son, everything else was made. This made God the Son, not only the direct creation of the Father, and thus unique in that sense, but it also made the Father’s divinity somehow greater than the Son’s. David F. Wright has summarized Arius’ position here. He says, “[T]he Father alone was really God.” Under Arianism “the Son was essentially different from his Father. He did not possess by nature or right any of the divine qualities of immortality, sovereignty, perfect wisdom, goodness and purity. He did not exist before he was begotten by the Father. The Father produced him as a creature. Yet as the creator of the rest of creation, the Son existed ‘apart from time before all things.’ Nevertheless, he did not share in the being of God the Father and did not know him perfectly.” So, Arius denied the co-eternality, the co-essentiality, the co-equality of Christ vis-à-vis God the Father. And his views, Arius’ views, were condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., where Arianism was formally denounced and condemned as heresy.

It’s important to note that while Arianism is considered the peak form of subordinationism, there have been others who have promoted various subordinationist teachings throughout church history. But again, such an idea of ontologically inferiority (meaning God the Son is lesser than God the Father) is heresy. Because it denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, and in doing so, denies what scripture plainly teaches about the Trinity. Got to remember these things go hand in hand as Walvoord said, “no attack on the person of Christ can be made without attacking the doctrine of the Trinity, as they stand and fall together.”

Well, it’s not just heresies about God the Son that have infiltrated the church over the centuries. There also have been several heresies which have been pushed and promoted concerning God the Spirit. Orthodox Christianity, I’m not speaking of Greek or Eastern, but just lower case ‘o’, orthodox Christianity, has always held to the deity of the Holy Spirit. The Council of Constantinople, 381 A.D. clarified that this is the official and has been the official position of the church, much like the Council of Nicaea clarified the deity of Christ. But the Council of Constantinople was made necessary, in the first place, because in earlier centuries of the church, there were some who were very clear about attacking the deity of the Spirit. In fact, Arius, who denied the deity of the Son, also (you can kind of see this coming) he denied the deity of the Spirit as well. Macedonius, Socinus, were early heretics who denied the deity of the Spirit.

Well, sadly, Arianism was not completely stamped out in the earliest centuries of the church. It still exists. It still remains. And for its adherents, it still condemns. Arianism lives on particularly in the Jehovah’s Witnesses movement today. You know, plain and simple and quite openly, Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the deity of Jesus Christ. And in doing so, they deny the Trinity.
This from their website, JW.org, “We have learned from the Bible that Jesus is not Almighty God and that there is no Scriptural basis for the Trinity doctrine. Although they might acknowledge Jesus to be divine in some sense, they teach that He is a created being. Here’s another one from their site, “Jesus is the only one directly created by God. Jesus is also the only one whom God used when He created all other things.”

What the Jehovah’s Witnesses are doing here, is simply recycling old Arian heresies that have been around for centuries. And to justify their doing so, by the way, this cult group, as many of you know, has created its own bible translation. The New World Translation, they call it, which they’ve done in just the past one hundred years. And what they’ve done in this New World Translation is they’ve intentionally modified the original Greek manuscripts going back to the earliest centuries to support their own false teaching.

There are so many problems with the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, most of which are outside the scope of our study here, but there’s one I want you to remember from this New World Translation. Which again, was cobbled together in less than the past hundred years. John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” right? Not according to them, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was a god.” Friends, this rendering is completely unsupportable in the original Greek manuscripts. This is completely fabricated. Totally created out of thin air. And so certain am I in saying that, I’m going to cite here a couple of proven Greek scholars who have commented on this New World Translation. William Barclay, “The deliberate distortion of truth by this sect is seen in the New Testament translation… It is abundantly clear that a sect which can translate the New Testament like that is intellectually dishonest.”
Or Bruce Metzger, the New World Translation is a “frightful mistranslation,” “pernicious,” and “reprehensible.”
The point being, Arianism lives on through groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Who were sold a bill of goods by their original founder, Charles Taze Russell. A bill of goods that will ultimately lead in their being condemned and spending an eternity in a lake of fire. These are not minor matters.

Well, going back to our first three pillar truths. There is one God, God exists in three Persons, each of the Persons of the Godhead is truly and fully and equally God. These, whittling it down, are the essential ingredients of Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy. There is so much more that could be said about how the Persons of the Godhead relate to one another. There’s so much more that could be said about the unity, the simplicity, the singularity of the divine essence. But I need to wrap our time.

And this wraps our time and study of this whole doctrine, in ten weeks of “Theology Proper.” I hope this study has been of some benefit to you, as we contemplated the deep things of our great God. I’m going to end our time, if I may, the way we started. You may remember early on, I think it was lesson #1, we read from Psalm 145.

Psalm 145 [verses 1-13], “I will extol You, my God, O King, and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on Your wonderful works, I will meditate. Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, and I will tell of Your greatness. They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness and will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.
The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works. All Your works shall give thanks to You, O Lord, and Your godly ones shall bless You. They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom and talk of Your power; to make known to the sons of men Your mighty acts and the glory of the majesty of Your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations.”

Let’s pray. Our great God, we want to thank You for the time that we’ve had this summer to embark on this study of “Theology Proper, the Doctrine of God.” I know that we have gone fast at certain times and gone slow at other times. I know that at times it has been just an index of scripture, thrown at these dear people as they are sitting patiently after a busy day, and a wonderful day of worship. I thank You for their patience with me. I thank You for Your patience with me, as I’ve sought to handle these matters rightly. And sought to impart them to Your people here at Indian Hills. I ask that the thing that would echo through this study, that would really stick with us, is how great and majestic You are. And that that would simply set us in awe. That we somehow, because of Your perfect wisdom, and Your great love, and Your mercy, and Your grace, we somehow have a relationship with You -- that God, the God that we’ve studied -- based on You sending Your Son into the world to die for our sins, so that we could have a restored relationship with You. And have eternity with You to look forward to. That’s simply too wonderful even to contemplate. And we want to give You thanks and praise, not just for this study, but for these truths and for who You are. We love You and thank You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.