Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jesse and Tony continue the Systematic Theology series with a discussion about the work of Christ.
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jesse and Tony talk to Matt Butts, the host of the Reformed Outlook, about time management and priorities.
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jesse and Tony explore the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this foundational episode of The Reformed Brotherhood's systematic theology series, Tony and Jesse explore the doctrine of Christology—the study of who Jesus Christ is. Building on their previous discussions of the Trinity, they unpack the Chalcedonian Definition and the hypostatic union, explaining how Jesus can be fully God and fully man without confusion or division between His two natures. This episode addresses common misconceptions, tackles early Christological heresies, and demonstrates why getting Christ's identity right is essential for understanding Scripture, salvation, and the Christian life. Whether you're new to theology or deepening your knowledge, this conversation will ground you in the most important question of all: "Who do you say that I am?"
The doctrine of the hypostatic union—that Jesus is one person with two natures—isn't academic abstraction. It's the key to reading the Gospels coherently. When Jesus says He doesn't know the day or hour of His return (Mark 13:32), we're not forced to choose between calling Him a liar or denying His deity. Instead, we understand that Jesus, as one person, knows all things according to His divine nature but experienced genuine human limitation according to His human nature. This distinction preserves both His truthfulness and His full divinity. Similarly, when we see Jesus praying, learning, growing, and suffering, we're witnessing the real humanity necessary for Him to be our representative and substitute. The hypostatic union isn't a puzzle to solve but a truth to worship: God became what we are (without ceasing to be God) so that we might become what He is (without ceasing to be human).
One of the most dangerous errors in Christology is thinking that Jesus had to "give up" divine attributes to become human—a heresy known as kenotic theology. The Reformed response is clear: the incarnation involved addition, not subtraction. The eternal Son of God, who possessed all divine attributes from eternity, took on a complete human nature at a specific point in time. He didn't stop being omniscient; He added a human mind that learned and grew. He didn't stop being omnipresent; He added a human body located in space and time. This is critical because if the Son changed—if He became less than fully God—then He was never truly immutable, and therefore never truly God at all. The Chalcedonian Definition's phrase "without change" guards this truth. In the incarnation, the divine nature remained fully divine, the human nature became fully human, and the one person of Christ possessed both completely.
The book of Hebrews repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus is the perfect mediator between God and humanity precisely because He fully participates in both. As the eternal Son, He shares the divine nature with the Father and Spirit; as the incarnate Word made flesh, He shares our human nature (apart from sin). This is why no angel, no mere human, and no demigod could accomplish our salvation. Only someone who is fully God could render to God an obedience and sacrifice of infinite value; only someone who is fully human could obey the law in our place and die the death we deserved. Job's ancient cry—"If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together" (Job 9:33)—finds its answer in Jesus Christ, who puts one hand on the shoulder of God and the other on the shoulder of humanity, reconciling the two. This isn't poetic imagery—it's the theological necessity that drove the Son to the incarnation "for us and for our salvation."
If the Son changes in the incarnation, if the divine nature of the Son is no longer omniscient, then He was never God in the first place because He never was unchanging—because He changed.
That which is not assumed cannot be healed. Christ takes on our nature in order to heal and restore our nature.
The disclosure of Christ is always a self-disclosure. You can't book-learn your way into the kingdom. You can't book-learn your way into understanding theology correctly either. There's gotta be an element of prayer associated with the two.
[00:00:00] Tony Arsenal: Welcome to the Reform Brotherhood. I'm Tony.
[00:00:03] Jesse Schwamb: And I'm Jesse,
[00:00:04] Tony Arsenal: Hey brother.
[00:00:04] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. Happy New Year, Tony.
[00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: Happy New Year. It's crazy. Last time we recorded, we were together in, uh, Enfield, New Hampshire,
[00:00:15] Jesse Schwamb: the motherland, if you will,
[00:00:16] Tony Arsenal: the motherland.
Yes.
[00:00:18] Jesse Schwamb: And now it's 2017.
[00:00:19] Jesse Schwamb: So what I want to know right off the top is what one thing are you looking forward to in 2017?
[00:00:26] Tony Arsenal: Oh, man. Uh, well, this is like a super, uh, immediate news release, but we may be interviewing Mike Horton sometime in 2017 so that there's that
[00:00:36] Jesse Schwamb: best year ever.
[00:00:38] Tony Arsenal: I know it's not for like, another couple months.
Uh, he's got a new book coming out and we are hoping that we may be able to do some interviews with him, which would be pretty epic.
[00:00:46] Jesse Schwamb: I'm pretty excited about that. I'm not gonna lie.
[00:00:48] Tony Arsenal: Yes. But I suppose a more real answer is the first, uh, Schwam Baby, which we talked about, uh, a couple weeks ago with mom. The, the new little one coming along should be pretty exciting.
[00:00:59] Jesse Schwamb: It's big news,
[00:01:00] Tony Arsenal: big news.
It's like we forgot how to podcast guys. It's weird.
[00:01:09] Jesse Schwamb: It's been so, so what's
[00:01:10] Tony Arsenal: what's going on in your world, Jesse?
[00:01:12] Jesse Schwamb: So I'm looking forward to, in 2017, this is something we also kind of talked about before, but I'm just gonna throw back out there. I'm looking forward to becoming more like John Stamos, which is basically your answer.
[00:01:25] Tony Arsenal: Yes.
[00:01:25] Jesse Schwamb: It's like the same
[00:01:26] Tony Arsenal: answer
[00:01:26] Jesse Schwamb: every time.
[00:01:28] Jesse Schwamb: Honestly, every time I say to somebody casually, like an acquaintance or a coworker that I'm gonna have a nephew, and this is like the first grandchild in my family, they, that person inevitably after like two seconds of consideration, gets really excited and everybody always says, you know who you're gonna be, right?
And I'm always like, yeah, I, I know. And at first I was a little bit kind of like, I'm not really digging this, the Uncle Jesse association with full house. But then I've just embraced it, like I'm, I'm down with it. He was like the cool uncle. And he
[00:01:58] Tony Arsenal: was,
[00:01:58] Jesse Schwamb: then I happened to catch like a couple of episodes just last night actually with my wife of Fuller House and I was like, yeah, I guess I can be down with this.
Like, there are worse things to be like associated with.
[00:02:08] Tony Arsenal: Did did you um, did you watch any of the new show? I mean, I know you said you caught a couple episodes, but did you watch any of the new show yet?
[00:02:14] Jesse Schwamb: Not besides those, not really. So like, I was totally confused 'cause my wife is in season two and I was also admittedly reading a book about, um, like behavioral economics at the same time that this was on.
So I wasn't like totally devoted to it, but I was like, why are they in the same house? And like, I don't understand who these all these other extra people are. So I, I don't have like the full context. Am I missing like a lot?
[00:02:39] Tony Arsenal: Um, n no. I mean, I, I think it was really just more of an excuse to be nostalgic is really what that show's all about.
Um, but what's weird though is like when it came out there was all this like controversy about. How like dirty it was, but it's not like really dirty. But there was like all this controversy about, well, I'm really nostalgic for like the good old days with full house and how, just, how wholesome it was. But it, it really wasn't that wholesome.
I think people just don't remember it clearly. But there's a lot of episodes where like, it, it's implied that Uncle Jesse is bringing women home at night, right? And they're like there in the morning. They're like, there's like women who are there at breakfast and stuff. So there's a lot of that stuff that's like under the surface that I think either maybe because when I was watching it, I was like a young kid, like maybe like 11 or 12 years old and so I didn't catch that stuff.
Um, or just like the background culture was obviously not like holy, but it was less sexualized than our culture is now. So compared to. Um, the general culture Fuller House is pretty tame still. Um, and full House was pretty tame compared to the general culture, but the culture is degraded so much by then.
Since then,
[00:03:51] Jesse Schwamb: what Full House was not confessional.
[00:03:54] Tony Arsenal: I know. Crazy. They were like doing catechism questions on the episode.
[00:04:00] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, how awesome would that be? Like all those quintessential scenes where like they're all getting tuck in at night, they're just like question 1 92.
[00:04:09] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Uh, Danny Tanner tucks in little Michelle and is like, alright Michelle, what's the chief end of man?
Michelle's like the chief end of man is to enjoy God and to glorify him forever. Dude,
[00:04:21] Jesse Schwamb: I was so waiting for your Michelle impression. That was what I was waiting for as I saw that happen.
[00:04:25] Tony Arsenal: I wasn't gonna try. Michelle's voice really dropped pretty early in her career.
[00:04:30] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, child actors. It's
[00:04:31] Tony Arsenal: so I think the real question.
With the new, the new baby coming along, uh, is which, which full house character catchphrase are we gonna try to teach the baby?
[00:04:42] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, man, that's a good question. I'm trying to think.
[00:04:44] Tony Arsenal: I'm thinking how rude is probably the way to go.
[00:04:47] Jesse Schwamb: That's probably like some of the most iconic, right? Like, what are the other one ones?
Like cut it out,
[00:04:53] Tony Arsenal: cut it out, or like, Hey dude,
[00:04:55] Jesse Schwamb: people
[00:04:55] Tony Arsenal: are just, we can't teach him any of Uncle Jesse's because those are gonna have to go to you. But
[00:04:59] Jesse Schwamb: yeah, like, what is that? It's like sweet mercy and
[00:05:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Have mercy. And
[00:05:03] Jesse Schwamb: have mercy. That kind of stuff. Yeah. I, I feel like I do, so there is part of me that feels like I need to do the research and pick those up.
Now at least need to be like cognizant of them.
[00:05:12] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. We'll have to pick a catchphrase for the, the little baby to learn and we'll have to work on that every time we see him.
[00:05:18] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. The, I have sense, a really great burning burden now to like fully develop the character in my own way. Yeah. So I, I'll just have to get on that.
I need some help with that. Whole me account.
[00:05:29] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, we can work on that.
[00:05:30] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that would, that would be
[00:05:31] Tony Arsenal: great. Maybe we'll put up a poll in the group so people can vote on what the best full house catchphrase was and what we should teach to our new, uh, incoming nephew.
[00:05:39] Jesse Schwamb: Honestly, when we were talking about what I look forward to in 2017, I was just gonna say, Jesus, just to like Jesus Duke, the whole situation.
Yeah. And also because like all of my Sunday school training was leading me in that direction, uh, and especially because we're gonna do some Christology action tonight.
[00:05:56] Tony Arsenal: We are gonna do some Christology action tonight.
[00:05:58] Jesse Schwamb: Systematic Theology in the house, in the podcast. Yes.
[00:06:03] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:06:03] Tony Arsenal: So if this is your first time tuning in, um, you should go back to, um, I don't remember the episode numbers off the top of my head, but the first one is, uh, called Creator of Heaven and Earth and Truffles.
Uh, and the next one is called Your Least Heretical Life Now. So this is part three of our systematic theology, um, sessions. So you should go back and listen to those 'cause um, we haven't really talked a lot about what systematic Theology is, but, um, just like Jesse was a little confused coming into the second season of Fuller House, um, you might be a little bit off pace if you come into the third episode of Systematic Theology and haven't talked about the other stuff.
'cause we're gonna be relying and referring to some of the terms that we developed in the last episode, especially on this one.
[00:06:46] Jesse Schwamb: Plus we just want you to download more podcasts.
[00:06:49] Tony Arsenal: Yes, yes. We also have new tracking software that, uh, we would love to inflate the numbers artificially.
[00:06:54] Jesse Schwamb: We're watching it.
[00:06:54] Tony Arsenal: Not that that helps us with anything, but,
[00:06:57] Jesse Schwamb: so what's the deal with Christology?
[00:06:58] Jesse Schwamb: Like, why is that something that you wanted to bring up tonight?
[00:07:03] Tony Arsenal: Sure. So, so a little bit of, um, preface is, is Christology traditionally in, at least in reform circles, um, is usually kind of a two-part affair. There's a discussion of sort of the metaphysics, um, of the incarnation. We talk about the hypostatic union.
We'll talk about what that is, um, tonight. And then there is a section called The Work of Christ. Um, and that usually centers around, um, kind of the specifics of what is accomplished in the atonement. And, um, in, in that discussion usually is covered the different kind of atonement theories. So, um, as we've said before, this is an hour long show, um, usually, and we don't have time to do an extensive course on the whole thing.
So, um, we probably will loop back to some of the atonement discussions when we get to soteriology or the doctrine of Salvation. But for tonight, I think we're gonna focus kind of on the, um, the metaphysics of who, uh, who Jesus is and what, how the incarnation actually functions as far as we can tell from scripture.
Does that make sense, Jesse?
[00:08:01] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's perfect. Because as we discussed, this is such a huge topic, so, and there's all these wonderful nuances to it. So, um, it's a bit like saying like, define God and give two examples. It, it would just be impossible to absolutely encapsulate it. So I liked the idea of narrowing it down and Yeah, absolutely.
I, I like that focus because we need to, or at least I need to sometimes remind myself that the Bible in its entirety is a book about Jesus. So in the Old Testament. We have Jesus being predicted when we get to the New Testament gospels, we see Jesus is revealed. When we read acts or the apostles, we're discovering that Jesus is being preached.
And of course, when we get to the epistles, we're seeing that Jesus is being explained. And then of course we get to all the way to the end, to revelation. We find that Jesus is expected. So Jesus is absolutely central. So I really love diving into all the different pieces of Christology because I find it to be like so warming, so full, so rich, and it's really the center of our faith.
There's everything else, or a lot about, everything else is, is the spokes which emanate from Jesus himself, the the Godhead in flesh.
[00:09:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, absolutely. And um, you know, we talked about, when we talked about the Trinity, that, that, that's a doctrine that's really at the center of our faith, but unfortunately a lot of Christians don't, um, they don't really have the understanding of what that doctrine actually teaches.
Um, and I don't mean like a, a full orbs technical understanding, but even just a basic, um.
[00:09:27] Tony Arsenal: You know, conversant understanding of the doctrine and the doctrine of the incarnation or the hypostatic union, um, in many ways is kind of the flip side of the trinity. So in the Trinity we talk about one singular, indivisible nature that shared among three persons, right?
But when we get to the incarnation, we're actually talking about two natures that, um, a single person possesses. Um, so a lot of the things that we talked about, the questions that we have to answer in the Trinity, we have to kind of answer the opposite question in the incarnation. Um, and so the two doctrines are so interwoven.
Um, I almost feel like sometimes they should be taught as kind of one complex of doctrines. Um, but it really becomes such a huge task to do that, that they, they kind of necessarily get split up a little bit.
[00:10:13] Jesse Schwamb: It's like two sides of the same coin in, in a way. And
[00:10:17] Tony Arsenal: Absolutely.
[00:10:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. I like that saying, like, you're, you're kind of confronting, not necessarily the opposite problem, but just the opposite hurdle.
So, right. We spoke so much about like, the simplicity of God, but then we get to the hypothetic union fully God, fully man. We have to really try to understand how can we articulate these in such a way so that there's, there's no confusion between the two. There's no co-mingling. Um, or, you know, they're complete.
[00:10:40] Tony Arsenal: Gee, Jesse, where did you get those words from?
[00:10:44] Jesse Schwamb: It's almost like we love theology.
[00:10:47] Tony Arsenal: It's almost like there's a historic definition, which was written by the Council of Chason in 4 51.
[00:10:53] Jesse Schwamb: Was there.
[00:10:54] Tony Arsenal: There was, let me read it. So, um, we talked about when we did the Trinity um, section, we read the INE creed and the Ian Creed, which was originally drafted in, uh, 4 25 at the, or sorry, 3 25 at the, uh, first council of ea, um, was then sort of modified and ratified, um, adjusted and expanded in certain sections at the Council of Constantinople in, uh, four or in, uh, 3 81.
And then, uh, in 4 31 there was another council, was the council of Ephesus, which really, um, tried to talk, we'll talk a little bit about, um, the different heresies that are present. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on 'em, but we'll talk about the different christological heresies. And in 4 31, they were dealing with a heresy called utic.
Um, and then, then 20 years later in 4 51, there was a fourth council was the Council of Caldon. And at Caldon they added what in a lot of ways was kind of an amendment or an addendum to the Ian Creed. Um, they kind of considered it, um, sort of a, an add-on or an expansion to the Creed. Um, and I'm just gonna read it here, and I, I'm not sure exactly what this translation is.
Um, but like the Nicene Creed, and actually even more so than the Nicene Creed, the caledonian definition has been relatively untouched, um, for the, what is that now? The almost, uh, 1500 years since it was drafted, a little bit more than 1500 years. So I'm just gonna read it and then I'll unpack a couple specific clauses that we need to always keep in mind.
So, um, it says, therefore following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same son are Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood.
Like us in all respects, apart from sin as regards his godhead, begotten of the father before all ages, but as yet regards his manhood begotten for us and for our salvation of the Virgin Mary, the God bearer, one in the same Christ, son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.
The distinction of nature's being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one in the same sun. The only begotten word, uh, only begotten God, the word Lord Jesus Christ.
Even as the prophets from the earliest times spoke of him and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us. And the creed of the Fathers was handed down to us. So, um, I'll put a, a link in there 'cause there's a lot to unpack, but there's two, um, two kinds of, um. Points that we need to tether ourselves to in this confession.
Um, or in this definition, it's not really accurate to call it a creed, but, um, you'll see, uh, a couple places where it talks about one in the same son, one in the same Lord, um, one in the same person. That phrase one in the same is really central and we'll, we'll get to why that is. The other, uh, is a section that I think, um, gets more focus in the, uh, treatments of the definition, but I actually think is not the central thrust of the definition, but it's that section in there where it says, without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.
So what we have is these two points that we need to maintain. The first is that Jesus, um, in the incarnation is one person. Um, and we'll talk about the different errors that came about that, that that was responding to on the kind of the other side of the spectrum. It's not really a spectrum, but on the other side of the question, um, that the two natures that are that one person or that that one person is, um, do not mix or mingle.
So we we're not talking about a fusion of natures that creates a new, um, nature. Sometimes you'll see, uh, the technical language is terim quid, which is just Latin for the third thing. Um, little hint, if you, if you wanna sound smarter, just say whatever you're saying in, in Latin, um, and it makes you sound smarter.
But that third thing, um, is an error that was called tism, which is what they were trying to refute at the Council of Ephesus. So we're trying to maintain this balance between two natures. One person. Um, and, and like we said with the Trinity, we don't have any analogy for that in nature. We don't, we don't have any experience, um, directly with, um, uh, a single person who has two natures.
You know, we kind of casually talk about like my sin nature and my, my kind of my new nature or my old nature, my new nature, or we talk about me being physical and me being spiritual. And so those are two natures. But that's, that's kind of just a sloppy way to talk about natures. If you remember when we talked about the Trinity, the, um, the usia is kind of the underlying fundamental substance, metaphysical substance that determines what kind of person a person is.
So in the case of, um, the Trinity, there's a single. Concrete substance that the three persons share and are in the, um, the incarnation. We have a single one of those persons, the second person of the trinity has that first nature, but then in the incarnation, he takes on a second nature. So it's really important for us to remember that the incarnation is about addition, not subtraction.
So that's a question we'll get to later. We'll talk a little bit about kenosis and, and what that means. Um, but sometimes people want to say like, well, in the incarnation, um, Christ gave up his omnipresence. He was no longer omnipresent. Um, and that's, that's not a viable way to talk about it. Um, we have to maintain that what, what Jesus was according to his godhood.
He always remained and always will, because one of those divine attributes we talked about was, um, immutability or unchangeable ness. And if Jesus Christ could change, if the sun could change, then he was never God in the first place, right? So that's something we have to maintain. So that's kind of a good starting point for us, um, to kind of go from, is that we have to maintain this, this distinction between, um, Christ as one person, but that one person possessing two complete natures.
Um, it's a little bit sloppy sometimes when we talk about being fully God and fully man. We sometimes think of like two 100 percents or something like that. Um, you know, it's probably better to talk about truly God and truly man, that what of Christ was God was truly, and really, and completely God.
There's nothing that's required to be God that was missing from, uh, the son's nature. Um, and then the same in the human nature. Nothing that is required to be human was missing from the human nature that the sun took on. Are you tracking with me?
[00:17:40] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I'm with you. And it's really important that we be, as you said, bookended by those two things, because though it may seem like we're drawing trivial distinctions, it really has tremendous outworkings for how we understand not just the person of who Jesus is, but his ministry to us and his current work that he's accomplished and the work that he's doing right now.
Right? And when we start to blur those two lines, then our theology gets really funky situationally when we start to kind of process what it is that Jesus has accomplished and then what he's doing for the church right now and how we relate to him. So if you don't keep those things like they're wonderful guideposts.
So if you move too far one direction or the other, those should be a kind of a source. Uh, to say you're cl you're in error.
[00:18:23] Jesse Schwamb: And while it may seem like that's totally innocuous to be in error, to be outside those bounds, you're gonna find that if you're slightly off at the center there, the further you, you walk away from that point, of course you're gonna be way out and it's gonna cause I mean, I know I've known lots of people where those distinctions haven't been as well defined, and they've really kind of sense a whole new way of freedom when they understand it's been corrected in such a way that, um, you know, the work of Jesus makes a lot more sense into their lives, that the Bible is more cohesive when they understand those things properly.
And giving names to them is, is important. And bringing those distinctions out to light is also tremendously important.
[00:19:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And so, um, what I found in my walk, um, you know, I think we all. As Christians, just like when we talked about the Trinity there, most Christians have sort of a general vague awareness of the Threeness of God and, and the oneness of God.
And that somehow those two things interact with each other and they adhere. Um, but they don't really understand what that means. And I, I think the same thing happens with Christology is that we have sort of this vague awareness that, that Christ is a person. Um, and at the same time we have this vague awareness that he's got this dual nature thing going on, right?
But we don't really have any idea what that means. And so when we come to scripture, um, we look at scripture and we get really confused at, in a lot of places, especially with the hypostatic union. So, um, you know, like the question of, well, how can, how can the son say he doesn't know the hour of his return?
[00:19:51] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly
[00:19:52] Tony Arsenal: right. How, how can the son walking through a crowd say that he, um, he doesn't know who touched him. He felt the power went out, but he doesn't know who touched him, so he has to ask who touched him. And so, you know, Christians throughout the ages come up with all these, all these answers. Um, anything from, um, downright heretical answers like, um, well, the, the son gave up his, his, um.
You know, his omniscience, he legitimately had no way to know who those persons were. And like I said, if the sun changes in the incarnation, if the divine nature of the sun, um, if the, the, if the sun, according to his divine nature is no longer omnisci, then he was never got in the first place because he, he never was unchanging because he changed, um, or, you know, sort of slightly more innocent, but I think still problematic answers.
Like, well, the son did know, but he was kind of, um, he said he didn't know because he was trying to teach a lesson or he is trying to make a point. Well, right there we've got the sun lying and then we're all lost in our sins because you're no longer the perfect sacrifice. So in a lot of ways, um, you know, these distinctions, like we said before, you can be wrong, um, and, and be wrong in an innocent fashion, and it's not gonna cost you your salvation, right?
We're not saved because we have proper doctrine. But at the same time, um, our doctrine, and as I hope you'll see as we unfold through the systematic theology sessions, is your doctrine is like a spider web. And when you pull out one, one thread or you get the thread in the wrong place, the integrity of the whole thing is less strong.
So when we pull out, we pull on this hypothet Union thread, you know, which is like a, a central thread. If you pull that out, or you place it wrong, it's gonna leave all these errors and, and problems in the rest of your theological system, um, that sometimes you don't expect. You, you end up finding them in weird spots later on, and then you have to correct.
And it's, you know, it's like, um, it's like when you're, you're working on a project and you make a mistake in the project early on, and rather than scrapping it and starting over, you start, you know, you keep going. Well, you get to the end of the project and you finally reach a point where you. Um, you can't really keep compensating and you realize you should have started over in the first place.
That happened to me when we were decorating the Christmas tree this last year. Um, Ashley and I are responsible for the, the Christmas tree decorations in the church, and I did the beads that wrap around the, um, the tree, and I got to the bottom of it and I, I had way too much, way too many beans, beans left over.
And so I was like, you know, I'll just, um, you know, I'll just like adjust up a little bit. I'll just move everything up. And it finally got to the point where I was like, I can't, this isn't working. And I had to unwrap the whole thing and I had to start over. Um, and the same thing happens in our theology with our systematics.
So it's really, really important if, if you are on the verge of checking out, 'cause this feels like some sort of arcane technical discussion. Um, please don't please give it a shot because I, I want people to understand, especially with. The incarnation that it is so central to not only what we believe, but how salvation functions, um, for the Christian that we really have to nail this, um, in order to protect ourselves from kind of going off course in a later, a later part of our theology.
[00:23:01] Jesse Schwamb: Right? This is like driving a car on an icy road such that it goes from like zero to 60, like from normal to accident, like before you could even see it. And I love your example 'cause I've actually had conversations about that very thing where somebody might bring up the point. Well, did Jesus kind of tell a white lie or did he lie by withholding information?
Because surely he's God and he's omniscient. But there's certain occasions where he's saying, I just don't know. And you can see how, if you can even posit that there is some degree of untruthfulness there, then like you said, dead and sin like, like it just goes that quickly. Yeah. And it, it's really something that's important to correct.
And we should probably also say like, just in passing, that when we talk about systematics or systematic theology, which sounds like very grandiose, what we're not saying is we're trying to take some philosophical worldview and impose it, or ICG it, like put it a square peg into a round hole of scripture and say, this is how we wanna interpret things.
What we're doing instead is we're asking a question like, who is Jesus? And we are systematizing the answers from the full counsel of God's word. So we're trying to go through and collect all this information, process it in a cogent and consistent way through the scriptures to bring us meaning so that we have this theology of study of God that ultimately results in doxology or worship to God.
So learning all the terms is nice, and trying to articulate it in really profound ways is great, but all the technical details are just absolutely worthless if it doesn't result in us saying, appreciating God more, who he is, the work he's accomplished, claiming him, worshiping him, leading us to our needs so that we can just fall down in admiration for all the stuff we've acquired in our minds.
So if we don't do that, I like, I'm with you. Like, this is so important. I hope that, uh, everybody can kinda stick with it and kind of push through, take, go, go over some of those hurdles, um, because at the end of it is just this wonderful worship of God, a more glorious reflection of who he is and what he's done.
[00:24:57] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. So let, let's get into a little bit of the meat of this because, um, you know, for me, um, the two big. Sort of epiphanies I had, um, I'm, I avoid the word revelation just by using a different languages version of it. But the two big, um, epiphanies I had in seminary was getting my head as much as possible around the doctrine of the Trinity and getting my head around the doctrine of the incarnation because I, I think, um, and I'm, I don't think I'm on terribly shaky ground, but I think that the, the trinity and the incarnation are really the keys that unlock Christian theology in a way that makes it coherent and in a way that, um, allows you to put, put, you know, feet to pavement and actually live this stuff out.
For sure. So, um, just just to, to kind of get started is we think about thinking about, um, penal substitution, right? We haven't done the atonement, and, and this is another thing that's hard about systematic theology, is everything is so integrated with anything else that you have to kind of start with some assumptions.
So thinking about penal substitution. Right. Um, in the, um, the 12 hundreds, I think in the, the Middle Ages, um, Saint Ann, some of Canterbury writes a book called Why The God Man. And his, um, approach I think was wrong. But his, his desire was to write, um, a treatise that would basically explain using logic, um, almost exclusively, but using logic alone, um, to explain why it would be that there needed to be an incarnation.
Why did God have to become man? And his answer, roughly speaking is that only, um, the, the debt that was owed to God and he talked in terms of honor. So it's not exactly the same as, as penal substitution, which is in terms of penalty, but the debt that was owed to God. I see we're talking about atonement, which we weren't gonna do, but the, the debt that was owed to God, um, could only be paid by a human because it was humans that incurred that debt.
So an angel couldn't do it. Um, God in abstract, kind of, in, in as God couldn't do it. Um, the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed to what God would do, but they weren't sufficient 'cause a, an animal couldn't pay for that. And so God had to become man in order to make that payment. But on the flip side, a man couldn't make that payment on his own because even if he lived a perfect life, that's just what he owed to God.
So he was never accumulating any excess merit or excess honor in order to, um, to be able to pay for other people's sins. And so God himself had to take on, uh, humanity and become man in order to make an infinite, a, a payment of infinite worth to be able to pay for the sins of humanity. So we start with that question of why the God man and.
What we don't realize though is that beyond just the fact that it had to be a man that made that payment, the relationship that Christ has with the Father, according to his humanity, um, is a model and an image that we can look at to understand our relationship with the Father as well. So not only did Christ have to become man in order to accomplish salvation, but in order for us to understand and be able to act out and live out our salvation, we also had to see Jesus interacting with the Father.
And so we can, we can kind of talk about natures as ways of existing or ways of doing things right? So Jesus has a divine nature and he has a set of capacities and abilities and attributes that he as a person has from that. Uh, from that nature. But then he takes on a second nature. And that second nature also comes with a set of capacities and abilities and attributes.
And in the case of his humanity, it comes with a set of limitations as well. And so that answers a lot of the questions we, we come up against in the scripture. And these are questions that the church wrestled with in the early church. That's why we ended up where we are, because they were asking questions like, um, how is it that the impassable, uh, uns suffering, God could suffer and die on the cross?
How can we, how can we hold those two things to be true? And the answer was, because he doesn't suffer as God. He doesn't suffer according to his divine nature. He suffers as man according to his human nature. And so, you know, sometimes we answer those questions in a way that practically leads out to be historian.
And Nestorianism was the era that, roughly speaking, the era that Christ was two persons. And so, you know, someone asks, well, how is it that, how is it that, um, Jesus could say he didn't know? And the, you know, there was the heretical answer of, well, he, he just got rid of his amination in the incarnation.
Then there was the kind of misguided answer of, well, he, he just kind of was telling a white lie or he was illustrating a purpose. And then there's the heretical answer that results in him being two persons. And we say, well, Jesus's divine nature knew, but Jesus's human nature didn't. And what we've done subtly there without realizing is we've started to treat those natures as though they were persons.
Right? So instead of saying, and, and it may seem, um, nitpicky and pedantic to, to talk this way, to insist on talking this way, but instead of saying that Jesus' divine nature, new and his human nature, didn't, we should say Jesus as a single person knew according to his divine nature, and didn't know according to his human nature.
And because those are two different things and two different ways of knowing. We're not saying there's a contradiction that, you know, there are. Jesus has a, a way of knowing things. That's a divine way of knowing things. Right? We talked about in the first episode that God's knowledge is not just quantitatively greater, but it's an different, an entirely different type of knowledge.
He knows things in a completely different way than we know things. So Jesus knows the day and the hour. He knows who touched him. He knew all those things. He knows all things according to his divine nature, in that way, in a divine way. But when we come to his humanity, he knows he doesn't know things and he doesn know things in a different way.
So Jesus isn't omniscient according to his human nature, right? Um, to, to kind of think about the ridiculousness of what that would be. Jesus, at one point, according to his humanity, was two cells in his mother's womb, right? As far as we can tell his development. The, the beginning of his development, his conception was supernatural.
But from that point forward, everything progressed the way it normally would. So at some point, Jesus was two cells in his mother's womb. Now are we gonna say that, that those two cells, which don't have a brain somehow knew according to humanity, all things that just, the, the logic of that just doesn't work.
It's just nonsense. Um, so we have to, we have to really think through the implications of this,
[00:31:31] Jesse Schwamb: right? And this is why we usually fall back on saying things like fully God and fully human 'cause we're not being trite. It's that this is like a whole nother realm of logic that in a sense, just like when we discuss the Trinity, that we have nothing to compare it to.
So we go on, we're on shaky ground. We try to start to parse out the pieces because we understand that we are separate and distinct beings or have separate and distinct or lines, clear lines of demarcation with our knowledge. And that's just not the case here.
[00:31:59] Tony Arsenal: Right? Right. And so, um, you know, that brings us to another area of, um.
[00:32:05] Tony Arsenal: You know, we, we talk about, we, again, we haven't talked about covenant theology yet, but in reformed theology, um, and, and I think more so in sort of Presbyterian lines of reformed theology than in, um, Baptist lines of theology. Um, the, the idea of covenant is really the center of how salvation functions.
And so, broadly speaking, there's a covenant of, um, works in the garden, which is gonna sound strange to Protestant ears, and we'll talk a little bit about it in a different episode. But there's a covenant of works, which Adam was under, and Adam, um, he. He is given this promise that if he, um, works the garden and accomplishes in his obedient to what God has, then he will be given access to the tree of life and will, um, confirm his original state of righteousness, which was mutable, which could change.
He'll confirm it into an unchanging state and that will be his reward. He fails. And so Christ comes and we have now what's called the covenant of grace. And the covenant of grace is that Christ will fulfill the terms of the covenant of works on our behalf, and then will give us the blessings of that covenant of works.
So Christ comes as the second Adam. That's another way to talk about Christol. Christology is to kind of go through the different titles of Christ. Um, Christ comes as the second Adam. And what that means is he comes as a human to earn the righteousness that Adam should have earned for his progeny. He earns that righteousness as a man.
Right. He doesn't, he doesn't, um, he's not Superman, right? It's not Clark Kent in high school playing football and using his superpowers kind of covertly to win the game without anybody knowing it. Right? This is Christ coming and suffering and struggling and fighting and working hard as a man to be obedient to the law.
He has to learn the law right the way you and I would by reading the scriptures. He accomplishes that perfectly. 'cause the only thing that's different in terms of our nature is between me and Christ, human nature is that Christ's human nature is not affected by sin. He doesn't have original sin to deal with.
He's not totally depraved like I am. So he accomplishes that as man, and then he goes before his father and he claims that righteous reward. And then he says, I did this on behalf of my people. Right where Adam would've gone before the father had he completed his task and said, I've done this on, on my behalf and on behalf of my people, and all of us would've enjoyed the benefits of Adam's obedience the same way we, um, we suffer the consequences of his disobedience.
Right? So even, even something that seems as disconnected as kind of this abstract covenant theology really is grounded and rooted in the fact that Christ has these two natures and that he interacts with the father on two different levels, right? He has the permanent, unchanging, perfect, harmonious union with the father that he's always had because of his divine nature, that Peric union, that retic union that we talked about last time.
[00:34:53] Tony Arsenal: And he also has this earned righteousness, this merited righteousness that he has before the father as a man. And that's the same righteousness we have before the father because the, the son gives that to us. The father looks on us, and he sees Christ's human righteousness instead of our own filthy.
[00:35:10] Jesse Schwamb: And if you, if the Lord opens your eyes to, to consider some of this, what I've noticed in my own life is just how brilliant it is, not just in terms of the conception of bringing this plan into effect, but thinking that this is, in fact, if we understand our theology appropriately as you've been defining.
This is the only way, and I really like the way that, uh, John Owen said this. This is from the glory of Christ.
[00:35:37] Jesse Schwamb: He writes, the mediator could not be God Himself as God only for a mediator, does not mediate for only one. But if he was God, then he could be said to be biased for there's only one God and man is not God.
Man needs a mediator to represent him just as God needs a mediator to represent him. So whatever God might do in the work of reconciliation yet as God, he could not do it as mediator. And he's saying exactly what you just said, that there need to be a true mediator representing both sides. I, I really, like I said this before, but how Job and his suffering kind of calls out to his really unfortunate friends by saying if, if only there was somebody that could come and put their arm around my shoulder and around God's shoulder as if to reconcile, to help bridge this gap.
And that's exactly what Jesus does, but he can only do that if he's, as you've been saying, fully got and fully man in every conceivable way and in ways that we can't conceive as well.
[00:36:37] Tony Arsenal: Right. And so sometimes the, the accusation is leveled. Um, that this is kind of like an abstract, philosophical concept that gets overlaid on the scriptures.
So I just wanna read something.
[00:36:47] Tony Arsenal: Um, the, the book of Hebrews, um, I, I know everybody loves Romans and I love Romans. Um, and we shouldn't pit scripture against scripture, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But the book of Romans is usually seen as like the, the central theological treatise of the New Testament.
And I really actually think the book of Hebrews is more of a theological treatise than that. Um, I think that the book of Hebrews has more, um, packed into it in terms of sort of raw doctrine than Romans even does. Um, and they're real similar in length. Um, so just reading out of, um, Hebrews chapter five, um, starting in verse seven, it says, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death.
And he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect. He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God, a high priest after the order of Mel Kazak.
[00:37:46] Tony Arsenal: So, so looking at this, if we don't have something resembling the Orthodox doctrine of the incarnation, we absolutely can't make any sense of this.
Right? In the days of his flesh, what does that even mean? Yeah, exactly. We know from. The first, you know, from John one, we know that that's the word becoming flesh. Um, he offered up prayers and supplications to him who was able to save him from death. Well, couldn't he saved himself from death? Well, yes he could have, but as a human, he had to rely on God in order to preserve his life.
Um, he was heard because of his reverence. So he wasn't heard because of his natural union with the father. In, in his divine nature, he was heard because of his obedience and his faithfulness as a man. Although he was son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. So as a human, although he was a son, he was already God's son.
According to his divine nature. He learned obedience through what he suffered. So he learned and became God's son through, um, obedience. According to his human nature being made perfect. He became the source of eternal salvation. He already was perfect. So how can we talk about him being made perfect? Well, we can talk about his human nature being made perfect and his human nature.
In his humanity, he became the source of eternal salvation to all obey him. Um, he obviously, salvation comes from the Lord. So he already was the source of salvation according to his divinity. But in his humanity, he may have made perfect and became the source of eternal salvation. So, like I said, not only from a, um, from a point of understanding who God is, but if we wanna understand the scriptures and we wanna really not have a scripture that's totally incoherent, we need to recognize that this doctrine is interwoven throughout the whole thing.
Um, even the book of Hebrews, you know, the first, the first chapter, the first chapter and a half or so is basically Jesus' God. Right. And then we start to get into the next couple chapters and it's basically Jesus' man. And then we get to chapter five and it starts to interweave how those two things interact together and how that accomplishes our salvation.
Culminating in the fact that Christ is our high priest who can sympathize with us because he's one of us and he's like his brothers in ways except sin. Um, really, this is kind of like in my mind, this is the loftiest most glorified, grandiose and encouraging theology that we can really grasp onto is not just who Christ is, but as Luther would say, who Christ is for us.
Yeah. Right. That's a central part of the, the creed is that Christ for us and for our salvation became man, it's not just, oh, I think I'll become man. He did it for a specific purpose, and that's purpose was for our salvation.
[00:40:16] Jesse Schwamb: Right on. Yeah, I to, I'm totally down with that. Like, that should get us all stoked up.
Like I just wanna run through a wall right now just because that is so deep and so devotional and it's not as if, you know in, in Jesus, we have all of these wonderful, as you just kind of dissected all of them, all these wonderful contries. And we often think of the word contradiction, demean to mutually exclusive ideas that cannot mesh at all.
Whereas like a conty is two things that might seem contradictory at first, but actually can coexist in harmony quite easily. So for instance, I really love music. I listen to music a lot. The Lord has given me such a great appreciation and a love and a passion for music. At the same time, I hate musicals, like I would rather walk in oncoming traffic.
Than watch any musical like May, maybe, I mean, like there's somewhere, okay. Like Les Mis is okay. I know Hamilton is like a big musical and I work in banking. So like that, that is like a weird fusion for me. But like, generally speaking, like I would rather go to the dentist or almost any other place than to sit down in front of, in front of a, a musical.
Um, so we have in Christ like this, this wonderful, as you just talked about, like nothing could be added to that. 'cause it was, it was really well done.
[00:41:27] Jesse Schwamb: Um, and it's not as if in addition like as we're processing that, it's not as if Jesus gets, lets us get away with not processing that because he gives, at least in like Matthew 16, that very famous question, which is really like an eternally contemporary question.
Who do you say that I am? So that is something that all Christians, all Christ followers need to answer. And we may think that we can get away with living in such a way where we don't, you know, it's too hard to think about and it just kinda stresses me out or makes my mind to a somersault, so I'm not gonna process it.
But as we've already said, every outworking from that point on really speaks to how we understand who Jesus is and we can't get away from answering that question. And that's the question that divides everybody. That's the question that brings division at all kinds of levels, even when we fail to recognize it or we don't want to.
So for instance, for whatever reason.
[00:42:20] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, the Mormons love to come and hang out with us, um, which is great actually. It's possible that like, it's the best of both situations because they think they're converting me and I think I'm converting them. But when, when they first started coming by, I was really focused on, well, let's like redefine all the terms.
Like, because, you know, they're using a lot of the same language. They're like, well, yeah, we agree with you and we read your scriptures and, and they want to on the surface, present this really strange like, cohesive family that yeah, we go to different churches and we'd love for you to become Mormon.
You'll see why. And you know, you'll, you'll read the Book of Mormon and you'll. Feel awesome on the inside, and then you'll wanna become Mormon. Um, but the further we got in our discussions, I realized all we needed to do was ask the question, who do you say that Jesus is? And the, you know, the first response for them is, well, he's, you know, like a spirit brother with Lucifer and he's a creative being.
And right away then we've, we've just wiped the table. Like we've just set the whole thing out in front of us and we realize that there are hurdles that are distinct and now all of a sudden we can't just say, well, we're basically the same. We're just talking about different things, but really we're talking about the same person.
We can't even get to like the same, uh, same sense of revelation. So this thing is like really, I think tremendously important.
[00:43:33] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:43:34] Tony Arsenal: And I think, um, you know, that really is the same for Jehovah's Witnesses too, is that, um, and really all of these early christological heresies, which I know we said we were gonna talk about 'em, but I think we're probably gonna skip that.
All of these Christologies Center around the identity of the second person of the Trinity and how he became. A part of creation in order to redeem creation. Yes. So I think that's great is when you're talking to a Muslim, um, a Muslim, a, a Mormon, a Jew, um, a Jehovah's witness, you know, one is Pentecostal.
Anyone who's not a Christian, an atheist. Um, it really always comes back to who do you say Jesus is? And, um, you know, Jesus himself tells us that he's the way, the truth and the life. Right. He tells us that he's the only son of the Father. Um, and he tells us that the only way to, uh, to reach the father is to worship the son.
So, you know, you've got in the early church, um, the, the Christians are being persecuted by the Romans for saying that Jesus is king and you've got him being persecuted by the Jews, um, for saying, uh, and for worshiping a man and calling him Yahweh. Right? Right. So this, this question of who do you say Jesus is, is really central.
And you're right. We can't get away with not answering it. And it's impossible not to. Because to not answer it is to answer it. Right. If you refuse to answer it, then you're not acknowledging that Christ is God and Lord and deserves your allegiance.
[00:44:56] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's absolutely right. On one of my favorite verses of all time when I think about Jesus himself is Paul right into to the church in Colossus when he says, for in him that is Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
I I feel like our ears should just explode when we hear that. Yeah. Because what I love about that is like, if I, if somebody wants to hire me to do an interpretation of that verse, or like a full Bible translation, like crossway hit me up. Uh, because the way I interpret that, so Colossians two, nine, Jesus is God's selfie.
Like, honestly, that's what I think. It's, it's here you have how good of God, uh, to send himself in bodily form to be the revelation. So even as you were talking about Muslims, I was thinking, you know, for Muslims like Muhammad. Is a prophet who's bringing the revelation. He's not even the revelation. Right?
And that that's the same for all the others, for Joseph Smith or for Buddha. And here we have Jesus as the way and the truth, meaning he's not presenting just a good idea or some new kind of philosophy. He is God and he is the truth in person.
[00:46:00] Introduction: Right.
[00:46:00] Jesse Schwamb: And that is like incredible, honestly. Like I'm surprised our ears are still working because that truth should just like wipe us out.
Like just send us to our knees. And so one of the things that I wanted to ask you about that I've often thought is when we look at the passage in Matthew 16 where Jesus ask his disciples, who do you say that I am? And then when we're looking at, let's say like Luke, I think it's like Luke 24 when, uh, this is after Jesus' death on the cross after his resurrection.
And we've got the two disciples. They're on their way on to Emmaus on the road, right? And Jesus kind of connects with them. Uh, they're, they don't know who he is. They're actually prevented from seeing who he is. But in both of these cases, there's something that always equally floors me. So we have this identity of Christ.
He's asking, who do you say that I am? Peter gives a response and Jesus is basically like, right on. But you did not get that on your own. And similar and similarly, when we're talking about the road to Emmaus, basically, I mean, that passage is famous for the fact that Jesus is hanging out. I think it's opus Jesus says like, what are you guys talking about?
Yeah. And ops is like. Are you kidding me? This is also from my translation. Like, seriously, are you kidding me?
[00:47:09] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:47:09] Jesse Schwamb: And, and so Jesus just is like, boom, Bible study time. Like I'm just gonna open up the entire scriptures and explain like he, Jesus was basically like, who has two thumbs and a Bible written about them, this guy?
And so he opens the whole thing up and then later on there's that famous verse like Kpa says, did our hearts not burn while he explained this to us? And so here's that long way to kind of get all this ProGo for this question. It seems to me there's this really equal pairing. We have the identity of Christ, but also that God makes it clear that he is the one who has authority over the full disclosure of that identity to whomever he chooses.
So like, what, what do you think about that? Am I off base with that?
[00:47:49] Tony Arsenal: No, uh, first of all, the fact that Jesus has two thumbs is really good Christology. Yes. Um, second. Second of all, I, I think that's ab absolutely right, is the disclosure of God is always only ever a self-disclosure, right? So the father discloses himself by sending the son to, um, to be that revelation.
And so, of course, you know, we, we would expect when, when the disciples, this is something that I think we get wrong a lot, right? We see pictures, um, don't imagine it because this is a reform broadcast, but we see pictures of that are purportedly of Christ that really aren't right. And he's got these halos, or his face is shining, or there's, you know, there's like a spotlight coming down from heaven.
Um, or we even think about like the, the transfiguration, right? Where, where Jesus shines and we think, well, that must be like his divine nature poking through or peeking through. But in reality. No, because we've got that, that whole point about the, the natures are not commingled, they're not confused, they're not, um, the, the attributes of the divine nature do not cross over to the human nature.
So when they look at Jesus, they see a regular man. They don't see somebody who glows. He's not floating, you know, foot above the ground and, and hovering alongside of them. Um, so when they see him on the road, um, you know, whether, whether it was sort of supernaturally held back from them that they couldn't see him or just.
It's the last person you'd expect to see. And you know, when you see someone out of context, sometimes, um, you can't recognize them. At first. We don't know exactly why it was, they don't recognize him. Um, but the fact is that when he's revealed, it's because he's revealed himself. Right. Um, whether that is a supernatural revelation, which, you know, what was, what we see with Peter or whether there's, um, just some sort of natural recognition on certain cues in, in the disciples on the road to Emmaus, you know, in the breaking of the bread.
Could it have been that that was just a familiar thing and that was finally like the context clue maybe? Um, I'm of the opinion that it, you know, it was a more supernatural revelation. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right is that God's, God's revelation is always a self-disclosure. And so the, the disclosure of Christ is always also a, a self-disclosure.
And I think, you know, if you're struggling with this concept, um, this, this sort of technical stuff, pray about it. I think that's something we miss a lot when we're doing theology is exactly. You know, you can't book learn your way into the kingdom. You can't, you can't really book learn your way into understanding theology correctly either.
There's gotta be an element of prayer that's associated with the two. So if you're struggling to understand this, then pray about it. Ask God to reveal to you and to illuminate the scriptures, um, to show you who his son is and how the incarnation functions as much as our tiny little limited brains can get our whole, our heads around.
[00:50:29] Jesse Schwamb: Amen. I love that because that has been a lesson, especially recently that has been so instructive to me, this idea that. It's not like I'm not smart enough or I have to work hard, or I don't have the right kind of intellect or the exposure to the right kind of training. And this was the same thing I felt after having lots of good conversations with, uh, the Mormon guys, was that I was just praying that, that, Lord, would you open their eyes to the glory of Jesus Christ, your son?
Would you be the one because you are in fact the only one who can bring that kind of realization? So there's this responsibility that we have, which I think we've talked about before, to be stewards of the gospel and to proclaim that in such a way that's powerful and effective, but at the same time realizing that the act of saving belongs entirely to God and the act of disclosure of seeing the glory of Jesus Christ, his son also belongs fully to him.
So the best thing we can do is to pray hard for that, that God would in fact continue to open our eyes, and that he would open the eyes of so many unbelieving people who desperately need to see that. But we cannot win them. We cannot force them to see it or open their eyes in such a way by merely.
Really good argumentation or having using flannel graph or, I'm trying to think of like what other, do people still use flannel graph?
[00:51:43] Tony Arsenal: I have never actually in my life seen a flannel graph.
[00:51:46] Jesse Schwamb: Oh. There used to be some final graph in the church. Like actually we would go in like during, uh, the, like, not Sunday, Sundays and like use the final graph.
[00:51:54] Tony Arsenal: That's pretty funny.
[00:51:55] Jesse Schwamb: My mother's just learning this about this for the first time probably.
[00:51:58] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:51:59] Jesse Schwamb: On this
[00:51:59] Tony Arsenal: podcast. So, uh, just email Jesse at his regular email from, so, um, we got a couple questions. Um, we're gonna run out of time here a little bit. So why don't, why don't we fly through these questions? Um, first we'll save, let's do it.
Um, the big question for Chuck for the last one, 'cause it's kind of a good, how do we apply Christology to the scriptures, um, question. So if you wanna hit the other, the other two and we can hit those quick and then we'll talk about Chuck's question.
[00:52:22] Jesse Schwamb: I just wanna ask this question because, like I said, this word is like a word I hate to say in public 'cause I just feel like it's a giant word.
I always trip it up. But, uh, so Thaddeus, which. Is also just a sweet name, by the way. Yes. I'd like to know if he goes by Thad 'cause or like Thad daddy. I don't know. It just seems like it's, it's right.
[00:52:39] Tony Arsenal: Tha Daddy Thad. Daddy Johnson right there.
[00:52:40] Jesse Schwamb: So, Thad Daddy Johnson ask, what's the big deal with a Arianism?
[00:52:45] Tony Arsenal: Okay, so what is that? Arianism? Yeah. A arianism is one of those early Christology errors that we, um, didn't talk about yet. Um, but Apollinarianism basically said a human person is made up of three parts. There's a, a human body, there's a human soul, and there's a human rational soul. Now, those are weird terms, but basically it's, you're a body, a spirit, and a mind.
And so what he, what a ary is taught is that in the incarnation, what we have is a human body and a human spirit. And that the logos kind of becomes the mind of that, um, spirit or of that, that human body and spirit. And what the problem with this is, is what you end up with is, um, our minds aren't redeemed.
Right. So, um, the, one of the Cappadocian fathers, I don't remember off the top of my head who it was, I wanna say it was probably Gregory of Nazi Anza, but he said, um, that which is not assumed cannot be healed. Um, there's a lot of different ways it gets translated, but what he's getting at is that Christ takes on our nature in order to heal and restore our nature.
So if there's a part of our nature, and in a poller case, um, or a Poller case, um, the mind was not taken on the human mind of there was no human mind of Christ. So the human mind is not redeemed because the, the sun didn't take that on in the incarnation. So that's kind of the problem. Now, this is not an ancient heresy that's died out, right.
William Lane Craig, who's probably one of the, um, one of the more famous, um, apologists in the Christian world right now. Um, his, um, model of Christology, I believe the book is called Philoso, philosophical Foundations for the Christian Worldview. He calls his model neo apollinarianism. And, um, other than a few, um, anthropological tweaks to his, his understanding of what a human is, um, it's the exact same thing.
And so he teaches that, um, you know, all of the sufficient attributes to be human to the Lagos already possessed except a body. And so all that, the log offs really took on in the incarnation as a body. Um, and this is the kind of stuff that we have apologists teaching and, and professors in Christian colleges teaching.
So it's really not a small deal. Um, it's a, it's a big deal. So that's the big deal with a Arianism.
[00:54:58] Jesse Schwamb: Also heresy.
[00:55:00] Tony Arsenal: Also heresy.
[00:55:01] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I'm down with that. Alright, next question. So this one is, well, it's another one about doctrine. So this is from Jake. What, why is the doctrine of ubiquity incorrect?
[00:55:12] Tony Arsenal: Because the Lutherans believe it.
No, I'm just kidding. Kidding. Next question. Um, it is wrong and the Lutherans do believe it. Um, the, the reason that the reform would say ubiquity, um, which is really, um, sort of another way to say omnipresence, um, is, um, incorrect, is. The, you know, we talked about the Caledonian definition or the Calon definition, and one of those four negations in the middle was that the, the natures do not co-mingle.
They're not confused. And, um, this really centers around the doctrine of the Eucharist and what happens in the Lord's Supper. Um, and the, the, um, Lutherans wanna say that the, um, the real physical body of Christ is present Now, the reform, look at that and say, wait a second. Um, Christ is a human. He's a, probably a pretty average adult male.
So he, you know, he might be, you know, for a first century Jew, he might be like five, seven. He probably weighed like 160 pounds, 170 pounds at the most. So how do we have 170 pounds of flesh that is in every Christian Church in the world on a Sunday morning?
[00:56:15] Jesse Schwamb: Right?
[00:56:16] Tony Arsenal: Um, and, and their answer is, well, he's God.
He can be everywhere. And the reform look at it and go, wait a second. That's a violation of Calon. 'cause you've now just made his human nature omnipresent. And there's a lot of technical ways that they explain it, but they basically go, well, yeah, that's fine. Um, and the reforms say no. So the reformed root, their understanding of why ubiquity is incorrect in the idea that Christ's human nature does not become divinized in the incarnation.
It remains human, it remains, uh, it, it retains all of the essential qualities of a human nature. So Christ, according to his human nature, is the same human person that we are. His humanity is not substantively different than our humanity. And my humanity is localized and can't be, you know, other than eating too much, it, it expands sort of naturally, but it can't be expanded, um, infinitely to, to be in every church in America.
[00:57:06] Jesse Schwamb: I'm just thinking if that would be like, instead of, uh, like a diagnosis of like obesity, if it was ubiquity.
[00:57:12] Tony Arsenal: Ubiquity, yes. Ubi there's a ubiquity e epidemic in, uh, Lutheran churches.
[00:57:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. Like my, my doctor was like, you have so much ubiquity, you need to really cut back on the sweets.
[00:57:23] Tony Arsenal: PS we love you Jordan Cooper.
[00:57:24] Jesse Schwamb: Absolutely. Yeah. I, and so for both of those, for me it's about, sometimes I always have this sense that sometimes we can just get too cute and there's a, there's a mystery and there's a respectability and there's, again, this not con we don't want to avoid confusion of all of these identities, but at the same time, I feel like it's just easy to get too cute.
And both of those for me are just getting a little bit too cute. Does that make sense? Yeah.
[00:57:47] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:57:48] Jesse Schwamb: So, last question from Chuck who is like, this is a great question. Like he is a question machine, so lemme just read the whole thing 'cause it's really good. After the resurrection, Chuck writes, we see Jesus walk into locker rooms and disappear.
I think he's referring to Luke 24, the end of the passage about the road to maus. Yep.
[00:58:04] Jesse Schwamb: Do these kind of events have any bearing on how we understand Christ continuing humanity and its physicality? Or do we see them through the same lens as the miracles Jesus performed prior to the crucifixion? Go, go.
[00:58:17] Tony Arsenal: Uh, three minutes.
So, so this is a really great question and I think, um. Y you know, there are different ways to answer this. So I love John Calvin. Um, I think of, uh, apart from, um, you know, living reform theologians that I've, I've experienced the living voice of John Calvin has probably been the most influential. And, um, I haven't been able to find exactly where it is, but it's been reported to me by good historical sources that John Calvin answered the question about Jesus walking into locked rooms by saying he climbed in through the window and the disciples didn't notice it.
And the reason that he was doing that, I mean, it sounds funny. Oh, that's awesome. But the reason, the reason that he made that conclusion is because he wanted to maintain, you know, that real humanity of Christ. So we have to be careful, um, to do that in ways that. I love John Calvin, but that aren't ridiculous, right?
Um, that is a ridiculous conclusion to draw. Um, I'm actually apt to say he may not have ever said it because I haven't actually been able to trace exactly where he said that. But, um, the way that I would answer this question is that, um, Christ did miracles as a human according to the, um, the union he had with the Holy Spirit.
Now, there are some people who take that position. Um, you know, you think of, I wanna say, is it Mike? Mike Bickle that out of, um, uh. Not Mike Bickle. No, it might be Mike Bickle out of, um, ihop, um, some of the stuff at Bethel Redding where they wanna say that, um, Jesus did miracles by the power of the Spirit.
And so you have that same spirit in you. So you can do all of those miracles too. Now we don't wanna go that direction. There's also something called Logos Christology or, um, sorry, spirit Christology that, um, basically says that the son was divine because of his union with the Holy Spirit rather than being divine in himself.
So even though some of the stuff I'm about to say might sound like that, that's not what I'm talking about. But when Jesus walked on water, for example, we can't, um, uh, item, well, I don't, well, I shouldn't say we can't, but I don't think we should affirm that Jesus was, like I said earlier, he was like.
Cheating. He was like superman, um, walking on the water, playing football and winning because of that or anything like that. He was, um, empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish those miracles. Miracles, um, in a very similar, if not the same way that Elijah or Elijah, um, did miracles, right? Jesus raised the dead.
But when we look at the, the Lazarus account, which is the most explicit and extensive thing, he didn't raise the dead on his own power on hi. He didn't go in there and say, I have the authority to, you know, for you to wake up. What he did is he went in there and he said, father, I know you hear me, but I'm day, I'm saying this for the benefit of those who are around me.
And he prayed to the father and then he commanded Lazarus to rise, and the father of the spirit raised him from the dead. And the son, according to his divinity, did too. But when we look at Jesus doing a miracle, it's a human person or a human, um, actor. Who is engaging that miracle by the power of the spirit.
So when we talk about how this plays in here is, um, you know, the spirit has the ability for, to make me walk through a wall, right? God could rearrange things such that I could walk through a wall or he could transport me from one place to another. Right? Fill up with the Ethiopian eunuch. Um, there's this weird passage where it seems like Philip teleported from one place to another.
Um, there's actually, it's funny because some Catholic priests actually claim to have the ability to translocate, which is what they say that is. So they think they can do that too. I would like to see them do that. Me too. Pretty interesting.
[01:01:57] Jesse Schwamb: The original teleportation,
[01:01:59] Tony Arsenal: right? But the fact is that the spirit could do those things.
So I think they have a bearing on how we understand Christ's continuing humanity and its physicality in that we affirm that Christ has a continuing humanity and a physicality that is glorified. So it's not the same as ours currently, but it's the same as our glorified humanity will be. Now, will we have the ability to walk through walls and teleport from one place to another?
Maybe. I guess. I hope so. Possibly. Um, you know, Conrad talking about spaceship, uh, penguin or whatever Planet Penguin, um, you know, we may have the ability to move through space in different ways than we do now. I don't know. I don't think we will, but we might. Um. So I would say the answer to your question is we see them through the same lens as mi as the miracles Jesus performs prior to the crucifixion.
Right? Jesus walks on water and we forget that a few verses later. So does Peter because he, in faith is acting according to the power of the Spirit to be obedient to the command that God has for him. So likewise, we see Jesus walking on the water in obedience to the father's command to, to reveal the Father the way he does.
[01:03:04] Jesse Schwamb: Right. I'm down with that.
[01:03:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. But that's still, I mean, there's still questions that we have to answer with that. Right? So on the, the walking on water account, the very next, you know, mark asked the question through the lips of the depo, the apostles, what manner of man is this?
[01:03:19] Jesse Schwamb: Right?
[01:03:19] Tony Arsenal: Right. And the implied answer is, he's not just a man, he's also God.
Um, so I, I'm still working out a little bit energetically how some of that works, um, because we have to be cautious with the text. But I think generally we should view most of the miracles Christ did, including these sort of spatial miracles. We might want to call them, um, after the resurrection. Um. We, we have to look at those I think in a similar light.
[01:03:42] Jesse Schwamb: Agreed. Either way we can be sure. What we're seeing here is the power of God manifested in human form, and that's just brilliant no matter which way you cut it.
[01:03:51] Tony Arsenal: Right. All right.
[01:03:53] Tony Arsenal: Well, um, I think that should probably wrap us up. Um, if you like Audible, you can use our trial code, uh, ref, uh, audible trial.com/brotherhood.
But, uh, we are already way over our time and, uh, we want to make sure that we, uh, don't overload your brains. So, Jesse, do you have any closing thoughts for us?
[01:04:11] Jesse Schwamb: No, just go love Jesus. Love him more. Yes. Pray to pray to see the glory of Jesus this week in a new way.
[01:04:17] Tony Arsenal: Absolutely. All right. Well that'll do it.
We'll see you next week.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tony and Jesse discuss the state of pastoral ministry with their dad, the Rev. Dr. Kevin Schwamb.
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tony and Jesse talk with their mom about family, the Church, and the law of God.
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jesse interviews former Punk Rock superstar, Conrad Tolosa.
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tony and Jesse talk about the real Santa Clause, his hagiographical involvement at the Council of Nicaea, and springboard into a discussion of Christology.
(more…)Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What does it mean to worship a God who is both one and three? In this foundational systematic theology episode, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb tackle one of Christianity's most essential yet mysterious doctrines: the Trinity. Moving beyond vague notions of "threeness" and "oneness," they explore the technical language of the early church—ousia, hypostasis, and perichoresis—and explain why these terms matter for everyday faith. From practical prayer patterns to avoiding common heresies like modalism and tritheism, this episode equips believers to think clearly about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whether you're teaching children, leading prayer, or simply seeking to love God more faithfully, understanding the Trinity transforms how we relate to the persons we worship.
The doctrine of the Trinity begins with two fundamental truths held in tension: God is one, and God is three. The technical term ousia (essence or substance) describes the fundamental divine nature that makes God who He is. This single, indivisible essence is not divided among the Father, Son, and Spirit like a pie cut into three pieces. Rather, each person is the full divine essence. The Father doesn't possess one-third of deity; He is fully God. The same is true of the Son and the Spirit.
The term hypostasis (person or subsistence) describes the three distinct "instances" of the divine nature. These are not merely roles or modes that God adopts at different times, but eternally existing persons who relate to one another. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father—yet all three share the same divine nature perfectly and completely. This mystery cannot be reduced to human categories or illustrated by created things, but it is the clear teaching of Scripture and has been affirmed by the universal church for nearly two millennia through creeds like the Nicene Creed.
The concept of perichoresis (from Greek, meaning "to dance around" or "mutual indwelling") captures the profound interpenetration of the three persons of the Trinity. This is not merely that they cooperate closely or share attributes—it's that each person fully indwells the others in a way that transcends any created analogy. Jesus Himself taught this reality when He said, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me" (John 14:10).
This mutual indwelling means there is no "overlap" in a Venn diagram sense, where three circles intersect in the middle and the common area represents "God." Rather, if we were to use a visual representation, the three circles would need to be perfectly superimposed, occupying the exact same space. The Father is not "part" of the Godhead—He is the Godhead, and so is the Son, and so is the Spirit. This preserves both the full deity of each person and the absolute unity of the divine essence. Understanding perichoresis protects us from thinking of the Trinity as a committee of three separate beings or as a single actor wearing three different masks.
While Scripture permits addressing prayers to any person of the Trinity (we see Stephen praying to Jesus in Acts 7:59), the dominant New Testament pattern is clear: believers pray to the Father, through the mediation of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. This structure is not arbitrary legalism but reflects the economy of redemption and helps maintain theological clarity.
Praying this way guards against accidentally conflating the persons—thanking the Father for dying on the cross, or thanking Jesus for dwelling in our hearts (which is the Spirit's particular work). It also shapes our understanding of how the Trinity functions in salvation: the Father initiates and decrees, the Son accomplishes and mediates, and the Spirit applies and empowers. Adopting this pattern in both public and private prayer doesn't restrict the Spirit but rather honors the distinct roles each person plays while celebrating their perfect unity. It's a practical discipline that reinforces sound doctrine and protects us from unintentional heresy.
No sooner do I think about the one than my mind goes to the three. And no sooner do I go to the three than my mind returns to the one. - Gregory of Nyssa (quoted by Tony)
The Father doesn't just have the divine nature. The Father is the divine nature. And the son doesn't just have the divine nature. The son is the divine nature and likewise the spirit. - Tony
You can't be a heretic on accident... A heretic is somebody who knows what the church teaches and knows what the historical understanding of the Bible is and willfully rejects that. - Tony
[00:00:00] Tony Arsenal: Welcome to the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Tony.
[00:00:03] Jesse Schwamb: And I'm Jesse hey brother.
[00:00:05] Tony Arsenal: Hey brother.
[00:00:07] Jesse Schwamb: What's going on, Tony?
[00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: Not much.
Not much. Just enjoying a nice, relaxed Sunday evening. How about yourself?
[00:00:14] Jesse Schwamb: So I have a confession.
[00:00:15] Tony Arsenal: You have a confession? Okay.
[00:00:17] Jesse Schwamb: This is an important confession. It's weighing heavy on my heart. So my wife and I last evening had this great opportunity to get together with some friends, some wonderful Reformed people, and we played a game,
[00:00:31] Tony Arsenal: all right?
[00:00:32] Jesse Schwamb: And it was a board game.
[00:00:34] Tony Arsenal: Oh no.
[00:00:35] Jesse Schwamb: And I have to confess to you, it was the Joel Olsteen, your Best Life Now board game.
[00:00:41] Tony Arsenal: Oh my goodness. Please tell me you're bringing that up here when you come for Christmas
[00:00:45] Jesse Schwamb: and. Uh, it was horrible. Like aside from the really poor theology, of course, I don't even know if you can call it theology, because it was just so downright awful.
[00:00:54] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:00:55] Jesse Schwamb: Not only that, but the gameplay, like, aside from the fact that it's straight up like idolatrous prosperity gospel, like it's incredible how thorough that is throughout the game. Not only that, but if you set that aside, which is a lot, I, granted the gameplay itself was horrid. Like, it, it, most of the game didn't make sense that it even comes with like a little tiny mirror so that you can look at yourself and at one point in the game say promising and affirming things to yourself about yourself.
[00:01:26] Stinger: Wow.
[00:01:27] Jesse Schwamb: It, it's incredible. So we had a really fun time because we definitely had a great opportunity to redeem it in some ways by speaking the truth to each other. But it is a horrid game, like in every conceivable sense. It's ironic, I guess, that. This game that's all about prosperity Gospel, uh, was really, really awful to play in its own right.
And disappointingly, I didn't win any treasure. I just checked. And my cars that are sitting in the driveway are still like the old, like, no BMWs, nothing like that. My teeth aren't any wider and I don't have any more money, so whatever.
[00:02:03] Tony Arsenal: Wow. So I have two thoughts. First of all, I think it's absolutely perfect that a Joel Olsteen game one doesn't make any sense and two isn't any fun.
That seems like it fits perfect with Joel Olsteen. And secondly, I feel like the, the rule should be the first person to claim that they've won actually wins the game.
[00:02:22] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that actually would make more sense. Yeah. Like there was a, there was a winner. But it was even confusing at the end, what you win.
'cause you actually write down like, uh, like an immediate goal, which we just like made like super idolatrous things. So we definitely didn't like play this game for real. But, um, I was curious. Like, I wanted to give it, I wanted to put myself into it, like as much weight as I could. I mean, really we're, we're here to help everybody, so I figured I'll, I'll take one for the team.
Wow. I haven't read that book Your Best Life now, but I've got a pretty decent idea of how like, just downright confusing and awful. The whole thing is. So they're even like, there's even, you get a certain number of like, I think it's like two, like faith cards and these cards are to play if for some reason you do not want to, or you can't complete a challenge in the game.
And like even the faith cards, like these half faith cards are just Joel Olstein quotes.
[00:03:14] Tony Arsenal: Wow.
[00:03:15] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. There, there's no scripture in this bad way whatsoever. But it was absolutely hilarious 'cause the company was fantastic in which, which we played it with. And so we had a really good time. But there's nothing like sitting in a group of people holding up a tiny mirror and the car challenging you to say like affirmative things about what you like on your face.
[00:03:33] Tony Arsenal: So, so did you purchase this game or did these, these friends of yours?
[00:03:36] Jesse Schwamb: No, uh, these friends of ours purchased it, but it was because we had talked about it and um, that's hilarious. I was actually really tempted to myself just to see what this thing was like because it was only $10. So I feel like this was like a decent investment and one taking that off the market from somebody else who might actually try to play that seriously.
[00:03:55] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:03:56] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, and also because it was just a good time.
[00:03:59] Tony Arsenal: So I used to have a Joel Olsen game that I would play. Um, I would, I used to like get my oil changed and my tires changed and stuff. At the local Walmart. We had a Walmart that had like a auto center in it. And so when I was waiting for my car, uh, I would walk over to like the book section and the game I would play is I would pick up a Joel Olsteen book and I would randomly flip to a page, uh, and I would randomly flip to pages until I found something heretical.
And I think like the record of how many flips that I got to before I found something heretical was like four or five. So it was a pretty, pretty quick bounce to heresy.
[00:04:39] Jesse Schwamb: That's outstanding. The, you would love this game then, because it's just straight up, like out of the gate, straight idolatry. Like it is, like name it and claim it.
So you're right, it is totally ironic that you actually have to win this game by achieving something when really you shouldn't have to achieve anything. You just right. Name it and it's yours.
[00:04:59] Tony Arsenal: So speaking of heresy, we are, uh, talking about the Trinity tonight, right?
[00:05:05] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. We are heresy abounds. So,
[00:05:07] Tony Arsenal: uh, this is your spoiler alert.
Jesse and I are probably going to say something on accident tonight that is heresy, because that's what's happens when you talk about the Trinity.
[00:05:16] Jesse Schwamb: That's very true.
[00:05:17] Tony Arsenal: So, spoiler alert, so the, the doctrine of the Trinity, this is, uh, this is entry two of our systematic theology episodes. Uh, we're doing systematic theology at the first, uh, recording of the month, which may or may not be the first, uh, Wednesday of the month when it releases with the first recording.
So, um, the Trinity is, is a doctrine that is absolutely at the center of Christian faith, right? But it's also a doctrine that like 95% of Christians have no real comprehension of. Would you, you think that's a fair, fairly accurate number?
[00:05:54] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think a lot of times we get bogged down in the sense that it's mysterious, so therefore we don't spend a whole lot of time really involving ourselves in trying to understand what we can or, or making clarification about things.
[00:06:08] Tony Arsenal: Right. So the, the, the general kind of perspective that Christians that I run into at least have is there's some sort of vague awareness of threeness and there's some sort of vague awareness of oneness and exactly how that threeness and oneness works, uh, and interplays with each other. That's where people kind of get confused.
So, um, we're gonna try to talk, um, you know, this is a huge topic and we are not a super long shown. We don't want this to be a super long show. So we're gonna do kind of the big picture flyover of the doctrine of the Trinity, and then we're gonna try to come in for a, uh, landing on some real practical kinds of things that you can take away after listening to this.
And we'll really help with your devotions to the, the persons of the Trinity that we serve and love and worship.
[00:06:54] Jesse Schwamb: Right on. I'm stoked. Let's do it.
[00:06:55] Tony Arsenal: So let's, let's put you on the hot, hot seat and we didn't plan this. Jesse doesn't know I'm gonna do this. Why don't you give me a definition of the Trinity.
[00:07:04] Jesse Schwamb: This is already way better than the Joel Osteen game.
[00:07:07] Tony Arsenal: This should be another, this should be another game that we play is, is, um, orthodoxy or heresy. And we'll have like the Trinitarian analogy of edition,
[00:07:17] Jesse Schwamb: uh, so many games that you and I need to create.
[00:07:20] Tony Arsenal: Yes. So hit me with the definition.
[00:07:22] Jesse Schwamb: So when I think of, uh, the Trinity, of course the first thing that comes to my mind is like the Portman two, if you will, of those two words, try unity.
So we are in some respects, speaking of three in oneness. And for me it's always been honestly simplest definition. God is one essence in three persons.
[00:07:42] Tony Arsenal: Sure. So that is the best short definition that we can give. Now, even that, and you'll see when you study the Trinity, is no matter what you say, and no matter how you phrase it, you're going to be sliding off of the rails one direction or another.
Exactly. So talking about the Trinity is this constant, um, tightrope walk of trying to talk about the threeness of God and trying to talk about the oneness of God and to hold those two realities, intention. And Calvin, uh, in institutes, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but he says that he was reading a passage in Gregory of NSIs, who was one of the, the Cappadocian fathers we're not gonna get into the history, but, um, the Ca Ocean Fathers were, um, were bishops in what's now modern day Turkey.
What's called Cappadocia. Um, and they did a lot of work in the, uh, fourth century, uh, on the Trinity. And he has this passage where he says, no sooner do I think about the one than my mind goes to the three. And no sooner do I go to the three than my mind returns to the one. And that's really the balance that we need to strike as we talk about the Trinity, is we need to always be, um, we're never going to be able to land in sort of the sweet spot.
And that's not because the sweet spot doesn't exist, but it's because we are limited creatures with no experience, no direct experience with, um, an a three person sharing a single nature or a single nature that is, um. Is, is personalized in three persons. Um, everything that we see, and we'll get into what these terms mean, but everything that we see and everything we experience is one nature, one person.
Um, and that, that correlation is absolute in creation. Um, but now we look at God and God is radically different, which we shouldn't be surprised, right? That God is radically different than creation.
[00:09:32] Tony Arsenal: So, um, the, the discussion of the Trinity gets really technical, so I'm gonna try to stay sort of on the edges of that technical field, but we have to understand some technical terms first, and this, if we can stick with these terms.
Um, and know what these terms mean. Use them in their proper way and understand how they relate to each other. It goes a tremendous different, uh, tremendous distance towards keeping us kind of on that middle path of, of, of orthodoxy. So the, the first term that we have to understand is the Greek word usia.
Now, the Greek word I, I'm gonna try to stick with the Greek terms because when we translate into English, we get all sorts of weird stuff going on. So the Greek word usia kind of refers to that fundamental underlying substance or underlying thing, or underlying, um, sort of the metaphysical reality that makes a thing what it is.
So I have a human nature and that human nature makes me human. And Jesse has the same kind of nature. It's a different, it's a separate nature, but it's the same kind of nature, and that also makes him human. And so the things that we share in common, um, we share in common because of our human nature. And that's what the Greek word usia means.
Um, um, sorry, I have a cold. So we're gonna be lots of sniffling tonight. We can't avoid it. Um, the, the Greek word that now represents kind of the threeness of God is the Greek word esis. And that word, um, refers to kind of individual instances of a given nature. So I'm an, I'm a hypothesis. Jesse's a hypothesis.
Um, my wife in the other room is a hypothesis. And we have to be careful because this gets translated and understood as person in kind of modern terminology. And when we think of a person, we are thinking of something that's rational. We're thinking of a human person that has intellect and will and emotions and those kinds of things.
But in the original kind of philosophical use of these terms, a, a hypostasis is not necessarily rational. So I have a lamp on a desk next to me, and there's a certain kind of nature to a lamp, right? There's certain attributes that a lamp has in order to be a lamp. Now this lamp is a hypothesis of the lamp usia.
Now I know that that's a weird thing to think about, but in the way that these terms are used, in the original, um, the original philosophy and theology of, of the trinity is a rock, a horse, a lamp. All these things are hypothesis. The sort of, um, the, the mental features, the rational features, those are important in discussing the Trinity, but they're not, um, they're not unique to a person.
Um, they're, they come from the nature. And so we'll see that that interplays in a sort of a, an interesting way later. Does that make sense so far? Are you tracking with me?
[00:12:22] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I'm with you. That makes sense. I mean, in some ways we're just making sure it's helpful to throw these terms out there because, uh, one you may come across them and two, all we're trying to do is essentially catalog, create some type of hierarchy, almost like genus species in a really rough way, trying to understand and break down chronologically, uh, how all these.
[00:12:40] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, absolutely. And so those, those two terms, um, roughly speaking, the usia is the way that God is one. The way that the divine nature is unified is called an usia. The way that the persons are united to each other, the way that they are not representing three gods, but are still one God. That's the usia.
That's how we're still monotheists instead of trius, is that the father, son in spirit share a single simple usia. And we talked about simplicity in our last podcast, but basically an indivisible usia, um. Now the way that we talk about God and we talk about the threeness of God. That's what we mean when we say hypothesis.
So the way that the persons are distinguished from each other, the way that we talk about the diversity that exists within God. Now we're talking about diversity, not division, not dis, um, distinction, not separation. Those things are really important. Um, and then there's a final term that, that we have to remember, and it's called Persis.
And what Persis essentially is, is Persis, is how we understand and maintain that the, the single divine nature is not divided amongst the persons. Um, that, that, that single indivisible nature remains a single nature instead of being sort of subdivided into three natures. And Calvin, um, actually puts it really kind of beautifully when he explains this.
Um, he's, it's in, uh, institutes, um, book One is that. Chapter 13, um, section 19, and it says in each hypothesis the whole nature is understood. The only difference being that each has his own peculiar, subsistence, the whole father is in the son, and the whole son is in the father as the son himself also declares.
I am in the father, and the father is in me. So what, what Calvin is getting at, and this is sort of previewing some of the questions that came up when we, when we kind of sneak peek to this episode in different Facebook groups is a lot of people will look at the Trinity and they'll sort of think, uh, they'll think in terms of like a Venn diagram, right?
You've got three circles and you know, one's labeled father, one's labeled son, and one's labeled spirit. And where they overlap in the middle, that's kind of where people envision the divine nature is where the person's overlap. And that is fundamentally the wrong way to think about it. So, um, when we talk about the whole father being in the son and the whole son in the father, basically what that's saying is that the overlap.
Is the whole divine nature. So, uh, the father doesn't just have the divine nature. The father is the divine nature. And the son doesn't just have the divine nature. The son is the divine nature and likewise the spirit. And so when we talk about the father being the divine nature, the son is also divine nature.
And so there's no, there's nothing outside of, um, the father that the son possesses, right? It's not like there's some attribute or some feature that the son has, that the father is not, there's not some, um, property that the son or the spirit has that the father and son aren't. Um, and when we have that Venn diagram, it leads us in the wrong direction.
So this perichoresis, um, the word, if you break the word down into component parts, it's kind of this dancing around each other, but technical from a technical language perspective, it's more the inner penetration of the person's, the person's kind of, um. They interpenetrate each other, they're in each other.
They're, they're not separable. You can't see a distinction. Um, and that's really important for us to maintain too.
[00:16:16] Jesse Schwamb: We need a sound effect for like, when Heresy's mentioned, like some, some guy just yelling heresy.
[00:16:21] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, there we go. Like a buzz. I get like a taboo buzzer from, from that game.
[00:16:25] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, exactly. I, yeah, I totally agree.
So if I were like to try to summarize it without the technical language, we're essentially trying to communicate that, once again there's that, which is a fun word to say honestly. And you should use. As often as you can, but there's one, and it's almost better to use the Greek word than essence because it's more comprehensive, right?
It has a really stronger, more full meaning, but one essence. But these three subsistence essentially, so the Venn diagram, if you take that, you'd have to collapse it on itself so that all three circles were on top of each other essentially.
[00:16:57] Tony Arsenal: Right. And if we're talking about the divine nature in each, each circle represents a, a person and their nature, then it actually can't even be three circles, even if they're on top of each other.
[00:17:07] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly.
[00:17:07] Tony Arsenal: Um, and that's, that's where we get with, you know, this mystery of the Trinity is, you know, I am an, I'm an usia and, and since I'm a concrete usia that actually exists, I'm a hypothesis. Um, you are an usia. That is a hypothesis. Um, now you and I don't share a single nature. We have, we have natures that are of the same species or the same genus.
Right? Right. We're in the same category. When we're talking about the Trinity, that's not what we're saying. We're not saying that the father, the son, and the spirit are just, um, beings of the same category. We're actually saying something that there's a much more fundamental unity in their persons than that.
Um, and that's important because if we start to say, um, you know, there are some analogies that we use in the early church where it's like Peter, James and John. That's an analogy for the Trinity. They all share a common humanity, but they're three distinct persons. The problem with that is that they don't actually share a common humanity.
They, they all, yeah. That's, that's tri theism, right? That's three gods. It's not, it's not Trinity. Um, the other side of the, the equation is in the West particularly, they tended to use, um, examples that lean towards too much unity. Right. So they talked about, um, the psychological model of the trinity, where it's like, well, God is like one mind, and you know, your mind has will intellect and um, and emotion or, or you know, whatever the different, the different components of your mind are, yet it's still one mind.
Well, the problem with that is that, um, now we're collapsing the persons in on themselves. So they're just sort of features or aspects of a single reality that's modalism or humanitarianism. Right? More heresy. So, um, before we, before we go forward too much further.
[00:18:48] Tony Arsenal: Um, I wanna just read the Nicene Creed.
So without getting into too much history, um, the, the Nicene and Creed was formulated, um, first in 325, and then it was amended and updated, um, at, in 381 at the Council of Constantinople. So when we talk about the nice and creed, we're actually talking about the creed that was kind of signed off on at, at the, uh, first Council of Continental Noble.
And the reason this creed is so important is because it represents the, um, kind of the earliest complete ecumenical creed that was signed off on and endorsed and used by the entire church. And it's been used by the entire church for 1700 years with basically, uh, basically no modification. Now that's a really big deal that, that there hasn't been changes, there hasn't been too much controversy once things settled in.
That we've been able to confess this creed together, um, is, is really significant. So I just wanna read it and we're not gonna spend a lot of time diving into the specifics of each, um, each clause or anything like that. But, um, this, I'm getting this off Wikipedia. It looks like it was a, a translation from, uh, Philip Shaft's work.
Um, and it says, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, begotten of the Father, before all worlds light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.
Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried. And the third day, he rose again according to the scriptures and ascendant into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father.
From then he shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead. His kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets in one holy, Catholic and apostolic church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dad and in the life of the world to come. Amen. Now, you'll also just note in the section on the Holy Spirit, um, I'm reading what was the original creed in the West? Um, in probably the seven or eight hundreds, they added the, what's called the Philly Oaky clause so that we affirm in the West generally that, um, the, the spirit proceeds from both the father and the son.
And that brings us, um, I think to kind of our next, uh, our next thing that we have to talk about is now that we've sort of identified how the persons are unified and how, how they're identical in terms of their essential nature. Every attribute that we talked about with, uh, with the father when we talked about theology proper, every attribute that the father is, the son is also, and the spirit is also.
And it's not just that they have the same attributes. Um, the Athe Nation Creed says it really beautifully where it has this sequence in the middle where it says not, it says the father is, uh, omnipotent. The spirit is son is omnipotent. The spirit is omnipotent, yet there's only one omnipotence. Um, and what it's saying is that the, the father's omnipotence is the same power that the son possesses.
It's not that the father and the son just both have the same level of power. It's that the power of the father is the power of the spirit and the power of the son. And so we, we've kind of established this unity. And this, um, the oneness. But now people will often look at that and say, well, so how do we know that the sun is the sun?
Could the, could the sun, could the spirit have been incarnate and been the sun instead? You know, are the persons interchangeable? And the answer is no. Um, and the reason for that is this section here where we get in the creed, where it talks about the son being the only begotten, and then the spirit proceeding from the Father.
And I'm just gonna read, um, uh, just, uh, one article outta the Westminster Confession chapter two, article three in the unity of the Godhead. And they use the word Godhead, um, kind of synonymous with divine nature. So in the unity of the divine nature, there's three persons of one substance, power, and eternity.
So there's that unity again, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The son is eternally begotten of the Father and the Holy Ghost is proceeding from the Father and the Son. And so what we're talking about here is, um. The way that we distinguish and can tell the, the persons apart.
And the way that they are distinguished and different from each other is in how they relate to each other. So there's nothing different about their essential nature. They are a single nature. They share that single nature. They're ex absolutely identical in every way in terms of what they are. The way that they distinguish themselves from each other is how they relate to each other.
So the, the second person of the trinity relates to the first person of the Trinity as a son. Um, and now we have to be careful because when we think about that in, um, our context, we look at our, what it means to be a son in our context. That implies a beginning. It implies a dependence. It implies, um, you know, that one person is of a greater rank or a greater authority than the other.
And none of those things are true in, um, in the top. When we're talking about the father, the father. You know, we, we recognize a certain order of persons in the Trinity, but we don't recognize, uh, a level of authority within the trinity in, in eternity past. So the, the son and the father and the spirit don't outrank each other.
It's not like the father is really in charge and the son submits to him eternally, and the spirit submits to both of them eternally. Um, there's an ordering of persons but not a submission. And there's a whole controversy brewing right now about whether or not that's the case. And, um, there's lots of stuff that's been written, but the simple answer is that, um, the idea that the father is sort of like the head of the Trinity in terms of like authority and that the son and the spirit are submissive or subordinate to, um, the father.
That is a, pretty much a brand new theology that was never really even conceived of in the church. And when it was, it was dismissed as heresy, right? It was called Subordinationism, or Arianism or Origin. There are all these different names for it. But people like Wayne Gruden and Bruce Ware, Owen Straton, um, and a whole host of reformed evangelical guys, um, have postulated this primarily to support their views on gender roles in the church.
Um, and just hands down, they are not reflecting the historic Christian tradition. So we will probably do an episode in the future, um, about complementarianism and egalitarianism, and we'll talk about the EFS controversy a little bit at that point. We might even do a whole episode just on the EFS controversy, but, um, historic, nice seen Orthodox Christianity does not affirm a hierarchy of rank or of authority in the Trinity.
Um, what's called add intra or, um, in eternity past or in the essence of what God is, there's no ranking. There is an ordering, like we said, but not a ranking.
[00:25:59] Jesse Schwamb: And we go back to the Westminster and the Nice and Creed primarily because this is a complicated subject and the language matters and it does have actual implications.
I think some people have this tendency to think, well, it's, it's just words and we're doing our best to describe it. But the bottom line is it's so prone to error because it's both at the same time. It can be straightforward in just saying that there's one essence and three subs, but then there's this problem where we get into this tension between distinguishing and separating.
We wanna distinguish the roles, but we'd be careful not to separate them. Or we go the other route and we just collapse everything into one.
[00:26:36] Tony Arsenal: Right?
[00:26:36] Jesse Schwamb: So the language is important and those two documents in particular are really good at helping to shape, provide like a construct where you know you're gonna have like a nice little boundary in which to play and kind of if you want deeper investigation, those are good resources.
Um, to start. So let me ask this, Tony, in terms of what we've been talking about and what you presented, um, where does the rubber start to meet the road for us?
[00:26:59] Jesse Schwamb: I mean, where does this start to impact how we actually obey and worship God?
[00:27:05] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and that's, that's a great question. And we talked about, um, you know, last week we, or last time we did a systematic, uh, episode, we talked about how we were talking about the father.
You know, we didn't start off with discussing sort of this abstract nature, and the reason for that is that we don't worship. An abstract unpersonal or, or, uh, impersonal nature, right? We worship the father through his son, through the mediation of his son and by the power of his Holy Spirit. And so the first thing that we, when we really grasp the Trinity, as much as our finite, limited minds can, is it drives us to relationships with persons rather than sort of this abstract kind of out there impersonal floating up above us.
God. Um, which is, I know for, for myself, speaking for myself, that was kind of the way I understood God. Um, you know, when I was a baby Christian, there was the Father and I knew like there's the father, the Son, and the spirit. And I knew that like the father was up there somewhere, but I didn't really feel like I related to the father.
But Jesus, Jesus was my homeboy, right? Um, Jesus was the one I prayed to. Jesus was the one that I asked into my heart, and then there was like this Holy Spirit thing. And I didn't really understand, like, well, I don't really get, if, if Jesus lives in my heart, then what's, what's this Holy Spirit? I don't really understand that.
Um, and so the, the father ends up being this kind of distant, um, maybe personal but distant kind of deistic thought. And when we really grasp the Trinity, what we recognize is that the father loved the world so much that he gave his only son. Right? That's John three 16. We wanna put some scripture or verses to this, is that when we look at that passage in context, it's not, um, God in abstract.
It's not some impersonal divine thing out there. It's the father loved the world. That so much that he gave his only begotten son so that no one would perish, but would have eternal life. Um, and then when we, you know, when we get progress further in, in the New Testament, um, you know, with the gospels, we kind of, the, the spotlight zooms in on the Father and then how the father is working in, in the world through the agency of his son.
And then when Christ returns and he sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Acts, we start to see how the Holy Spirit moves. And the Holy Spirit is the personal presence of the Lord in our lives. Now, that's not to say that the Holy Spirit isn't a person in and of himself, but the presence of the Holy Spirit is the way that Christ, um, at least for now, uh, fulfills his promise that he would be with us till the end of the earth because Jesus is not sitting in the room with me according to his humanity.
Right. Exactly. He has chosen to, um, chosen to be personally present primarily as a localized human person. Uh, that's his, his personal presence with us is the same way that he was personally present with his apostles, or in a similar way, I should say. And his presence was the presence of the Father the same way or a similar way.
The spirit's presence in our life is the presence of both the father and the son in our lives now. So the Trinity is really how we relate to, um, to God, how we relate to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We can only ever be Trinitarian, right? We only ever relate to God because of the Holy Spirit, and we can only ever have the spirit in our life because Christ purchased our righteousness in order to make us a, a viable place for the Holy Spirit to dwell.
Does that kind of get out what you're looking for there?
[00:30:35] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I think that's right on. And it's a wonderful reality that. We have truth represented in a person and not just an idea, right? Not just like some kind of concept to which you can grant intellectual ascent, but this idea that, because there's a lot of confusion on this.
Even when I speak to people sometimes, or we're just having casual conversations about the trinity, or to whom do we pray or where is Jesus, you know, we have a lot of like, just colloquial, kind of common, not always thoughtful language in how we describe Jesus being present with us. And, and he's not, and we actually much prefer it that way because he's forever gonna be identified with humanity, which means that he like eyeballs, blood vessels, hands, feet, like he's in a physical place, right?
In a space and in some kind of real reality based, uh, place. And that means then that he's given us this, the spirit, like you said, essentially to indwell us with his presence. But he's not like here with us. Like he's not in the room.
[00:31:32] Tony Arsenal: Right.
[00:31:33] Jesse Schwamb: And, and we should love that because he's forever chosen to identify himself with humanity.
Yeah.
[00:31:39] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
[00:31:41] Tony Arsenal: Um, we'll, we'll talk about it a little bit more when we get to Christology in a couple weeks. Um, what we're not saying is that the sun is no longer omnipresent or that the sun Right. You know, we're not saying that. Um, there's a doctrine in Reformed theology called the Extra Calvinistic Come.
And what that is roughly speaking is that the son is personally present in two ways. He's personally present in all times, all places, um, omni, presently, whatever that means. Um, he's personally present that way, but so is the father and we don't directly exactly experience or, um, perceive that, um, ever. I mean, I've never in any time that I've ever thought been able to personally perceive the presence of the father.
Um, that's largely because the father is in corporeal. We can't sense him. None of our faculties are equipped to do that, and Christ is present in this room with me in that way, in a way that my faculties are not equipped to perceive. He's also personally present in a local way, in, uh, in body, in, in heaven.
Um, so he's not present with us in a way that we can perceive. Now, we'll talk about how those things matter when we get to next week.
[00:32:53] Tony Arsenal: The Holy Spirit, however, in dwells us in a way that our faculty still can't perceive, but in a way that changes us. So we may not feel it or sense it or know it. Um, you know, we don't, we might get the Holy Spirit goosebumps once in a while, but that's probably more a matter of adrenaline and emotion than it is, um, any sort of real sense of the divine.
But the Holy Spirit is present in a way that changes us, that we understand and know. Um, the, the father and the Son is not present in the same way. They're present in the, in the Holy Spirit, but not in that same personal way. And, and we're getting into all sorts of mystery here.
[00:33:28] Jesse Schwamb: Right. And that, that's what's tough is, is trying to make sure that we can distinguish but not separate and then again, not co-mingle too much.
So it's that we're not appreciating like the economy of the Trinity, the different roles, uh, that they have in terms of the plan of salvation, the working outta salvation. That's, that's a whole nother conversation.
[00:33:45] Jesse Schwamb: But one of the things that, uh, often comes up, and I think you and I have talked about this before, but so how does that impact, like to whom do we pray?
Sure. Because that's like a, a big question. A lot of times we have the Trinity and sometimes we just start praying and we're well intentioned and we're going all over the place and you know, we find that we either we're addressing the different persons or we're not. Sometimes, you know, people are just not sure who should I address my prayers to.
[00:34:09] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And so I think, um. We'll, we'll do this kind of in backwards order. So I think that as Christians, and some people will disagree with that, and this is fine. As Christians, we are permitted to address our prayers to any one person of the Trinity. Um, we can pray to the Holy Spirit, we can pray to Jesus, we can pray to the Father.
We can also pray, I think, to kind of collectively to the three persons. And we may, we may address God. And what we're doing when we address God kind of in air quotes, is we're addressing the three persons collectively. So just like I might stand in front of, um, I might stand in front of a group of people and I might address them as a single.
I might use singular language when addressing a group of people. Um, we also can address God and be addressing the Father, son, and Holy Spirit as persons. Um.
[00:34:58] Tony Arsenal: In that way, I think that the biblical pattern that we see in the New Testament, and I would actually argue probably in in the Old Testament, and especially in the Psalms, is to pray to the Father by the mediation of the Son, which is why we talk about praying in Jesus' name is because he's our mediator and we do so by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And I use that, that sort of pattern, um, religiously, and I don't mean that in like a pejorative sense, but I use that pattern every single time I pray. And here's why is I'm sure that we've all been in a circumstance where somebody is praying and they start out praying to the father, and then they sort of subtly and unknowingly shift to praying, uh, to thanking the father for coming and dying on the cross and for, for living in our heart.
And then they get to the end of the prayer and they say in your name. Amen. Right? And so what we've done is we've confused and conflated the, the roles that each person plays in the economy of salvation. Um, at best we just confuse the rules. Un unwittingly, at worst, we're actually kind of picturing a single God or a single person who's doing different things at different times.
And that's modalism. So there's our heresy alert again. Um, so for my own prayer life, um, and like when I pray publicly, I'm very intentional to be addressing my prayers to the father. To be closing my prayers saying in the name of Jesus Christ. And I also say, and in the power of your Holy Spirit. And the reason I do that is because it helps me from getting confused, right?
Um, and I pray, I pray publicly in church almost every week. And, um, I don't wanna be a subject of confusion for other people. Right. So I'm praying that way and I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not a teacher, um, in the church when I'm praying, but I'm praying that way in order to, you know, kind of have it be caught by the other people that are there.
And, you know, my last church there was actually a, a guy who, um, I noticed. You know, after being with him in Bible study for like six months, he started praying the same way. And it was just really, kind of, kind of heartwarming to see like this person's prayers are clearer and less likely to be confusing because he's picked up on this pattern that the, the Bible itself gives us, right?
The New Testament. Paul closes a lot of his letters in these Trinitarian prayers. Um, so I think that's the pattern in the New Testament. But we do have examples of, I think Steven in Acts when he's, you know, he looks up into heaven and he, he prays to Jesus. So I think that's permissible, right? Um, I can't think of any explicit instances in, in the Bible where someone prays to the Holy Spirit, but I can't imagine that if it's appropriate to pray to the Father and the Son, that it somehow would be inappropriate to pray to the Spirit.
But from a pragmatic standpoint, I just think it makes sense for us to be intentional, um, to pattern our prayers after the dominant, you know, the dominant pattern in the Bible, and then also in a way that that shapes our Trinitarian theology as we pray as well.
[00:37:52] Jesse Schwamb: Absolutely. It's just a really great habit to get into because it keeps us mindful and cognizant of those things.
Mm-hmm. And like I said, so I don't think it's, we, it's wrong to, to pray to Jesus, but to do so with like a very focused mind. Right. When you're doing that, so that again, you're appreciating the distinction of the persons and again, their role at various in affecting salvation and in understanding to whom you're bringing the request before.
So I'm with you. That's a really good habit, I think, just to practice, even if it's just in your personal prayer life. Because I found, as I've done that it also gives you a greater appreciation for each of the three and what you're doing and how you're relating in different ways. Yeah. And that's just good practical theology.
I think it's, it's teaching and it's transformative. And, uh, it's beautiful appreciation of the persons.
[00:38:42] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:38:43] Tony Arsenal: And one, one other thought about that before we move on to a slightly different part of this is if you, when you're reading theology, whether it's um, John Calvin or a modern theologian, um, especially in the Reformed traditions where I've experienced this, if you look carefully, you'll see that most of the time when a person uses the word God, they're talking about the father.
Right? And the way that you usually. See this is with the pronouns that are associated in other places. So I don't remember, I was reading Calvin and I don't remember exactly where it was somewhere in book four and it was talking, you know, he was talking about God does this, God does that, God does this.
And then you, you'll see, he says, and he sent his son or he ministers to us by His spirit. So when you look at that, you can backtrack that, and you have to be careful because people don't always use language consistently. So we have to be careful of trying to like trace these thoughts too far. 'cause sometimes they just, you're gonna read it wrong because they're just not being consistent.
But when you look at it, that means we're talking about the father. And that plays out in the New Testament too. If you do a survey of the word Theos in Greek, which is the word for God, and you do a survey in the New Testament almost universally, when the word is not clearly modified by something else, um, you will see God being used as the father.
Yeah, almost universally. And so for me too, I just think, um, you know, creeds are great. I love creeds. I love confessions. They serve a vital, important role, um, in the life of the church and in, in protecting us from ourselves. But our language should reflect as close as possible, the language of the New Testament and the way that the New Testament talks.
Um, and I say the New Testament because the New Testament is the fullest, um, fullest revelation that we have. That's not to say that the Old Testament is somehow faulty, but it's a, the Old Testament is a book of shadows and types. It's not a partial revelation, but it's an, in some ways it's an obscured revelation.
Now, when we look at the New Testament, that cast some light back on. So, um, you know, I mentioned the prayers in the Psalms. Um, it's not a hundred percent of the time, but Jesus prayed those psalms. So if Jesus is praying those psalms, then we have to have a theology of what those psalms mean that allows Jesus to pray them without, in most cases, praying to himself.
Right. So there's some instances where the Bible explicitly tells us that the a given psalm is about the Son, right? Psalm one 10, I think is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament, and it clearly tells us that, um, that there's the Lord capital LORD, Yahweh, and the Lord says to my Lord, so Jesus could pray that Psalm, but we clearly have the Lord capital LORD.
Is the father, right? Because the father says to the son, I will make you a pre, you know, today I have begotten you. I'll make you a priest in the order melnick. So we have to, when we look at the Psalms, we have to be really intentional to try to spot that. And generally, my, my practice is to assume, unless I have a reason otherwise, that the word God or the word Yahweh or the word Lord, um, to assume that that word refers to the Father.
Unless I have a reason to think otherwise. There are people that would disagree and say, that's a faulty hermeneutic, but in my experience, that's yielded really productive, fruitful interpretations that play out. So Genesis one, for example, in the beginning, God, right? Is that the trinity? Is that some, one of the specific persons?
Well, what does God do? He speaks well, we go to John one. In the beginning was the word. The spoken word. The word was, uh, the word was with God. The Word was God. All things were created through him. So we've now got God creating by means of his spoken word. And then what happens next? The spirit hovers over the water.
[00:42:24] Tony Arsenal: So if we understand God in Genesis one, the word God, Elohim to be the Father, we have a really clear, you know, um, a really clear parallel to John one, one. And then we get to, uh, Genesis 1 26 and God says, let us make man in our own image. Well, this is a passage that has confused people to no end. Who is God talking to?
Well, God is the father here. He's speaking to the son of the Spirit. We don't have to think about some weird court, you know, some weird counsel of angels or a royal we, or any of the ways that people try to explain that. It's right on the surface of the text. The father says to the Son of the Spirit, let us make man in our image.
Um, the same thing happens, I think in Genesis three. And he says, you know, the, the, the man has become like one of us. Well, who is, who is he talking to? He's become like one of us, like the other persons of the Trinity. So I think that's a good general practice when we're reading scripture is, is to follow the pattern of the New Testament and apply that to the Old Testament.
The pattern of the New Testament is the word God. The word Lord generally refers to the Father, although sometimes it refers to the Son and the spirit too. Um, and then we look back and see that and apply that to the Old Testament.
[00:43:34] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I think that part of the, the trouble we all find ourselves in is that we first wanna so badly understand more about God, more about his person.
We desire to know him and to love him better. And then we desire to communicate that knowledge as best that we can. So even the words, all the words we've been using are in a sense, metaphors in of themselves, right? So there's no really great comparison, there's no really great metaphor, and yet we're still stuck with using language that is all based on like a single essence, single substance, uh, subsistence like person, right?
Which means that we totally lack any kind of faculties or available tools to really provide a really good explanation. So it is really helpful to kind of process this and think through this. It's also really devotional, I think, in terms of kind of wrapping up how we understand this with how that impacts a lot of the world in which we live and how we understand the world.
So for instance, the fact that, as you said, with God's essentially speaking to himself or speaking to the, to Jesus and the spirit of the son. Uh, from Genesis one, this idea that how completely coherent and cogent the entire scriptures are because of the trinity. So we have love preexisting because there is the trinity unity and diversity and community all in the trinity,
[00:44:51] Tony Arsenal: right?
[00:44:51] Jesse Schwamb: Or the fact that for most of mankind's history, there's always been this longing to find the unity in the diversity, which is, you know, what Univers and university essentially were mean in their essence. So it's wonderful that when we start to look at this, though, it might seem like unnecessary comp, unnecessarily complicated.
What we really find is the mystery propels us forward to appreciate more how God in his very being and the ways that we can at least understand it in a small way, uh, is so consistent with the world in which we live, that we would expect God to be like this because we see that in the world that he has created, right, and we find him to be.
Wholly consistent, even if we can't understand the wonderful nuances of what it means to have that kind of, to be that kind of being. Does that make sense?
[00:45:39] Tony Arsenal: It does. And I I just wanna touch on one more kind of technical aspect before we move on to some questions and stuff that we had in a couple different groups is there's also, um, you know, there's two ways that we think about the Trinity, right?
[00:45:51] Tony Arsenal: We think about the Trinity add extra, um, or sorry, add intra or kind of to the inside, and that is God, um, the, the persons of the Trinity and the, the, the divine nature as they are in themselves in eternity past oriented towards each other or internally. Um, we don't know much about that, right? We don't know a lot because we can't peer into the Trinity.
Um, then we talk about the Trinity ad extra or kind of oriented outward and, and everything that the Trinity does. In the act of creating and everything towards creation is AD extra. Now there's a debate that's raged through the church throughout history of how much does the AD Extra Trinity really tell us about the ADRA trinity.
And that's not to say they're different trinity, but how do the ad extra activities of the the Trinity. How did that, what does that tell us about the ad intro and, um, we won't get into it, but, um, the, the basic answer that I would give is a little bit, it tells us something because God, God is not gonna act in ways that are inconsistent with his nature.
So the father, son, and spirit, as they act toward creation, act consistently with who and what they are. But that being said, um, there are things that the father, son, and spirit have to do in creation that do not reflect realities in themselves. So the, the relationships of authority and submission that we talked about earlier, that's one of those things is that as they act toward creation, there's a clear order of submission, right?
The father, um, commissions the son to do a particular task. The son obeys the father and submits himself to that command. And the spirit, in many ways, submits himself to both the father and the son's command. That's clear from scripture that that's what happens in external acts. That doesn't mean that that exists in the internal, uh, the internal nature of the Trinity.
And as we're talking about the external acts, it's important for us to remember. There's a Latin phrase, I'm not gonna try it, but, um, 'cause I'll butcher it. I don't remember it off the top of my head, but it's basically the external operations of the Trinity cannot be divided. And what that means is that everything that God does towards, um, towards creation or externally, he does in perfect unity with his son and with his spirit.
And it's always the same pattern, is the Father acts. The son, um, accomplishes what the father desires and the spirit brings that effect into, um, application. So the father decrees who the son will come to save the son comes and obtains their redemption, and the spirit then applies that obtained redemption to his people, right?
The father desires to create and determines what will be created the son brings about that creation. We see that in the, the analogy of speech and genesis. Um, and then we see the spirit hovering over the water and kind of bringing that effect into to being. So it's really important that we don't make one person of the Trinity kind of a rogue actor, right?
The son doesn't act on his own accord, right? He says it all over the gospel of John. He doesn't come to do his own will, but comes to do the will of the father. He doesn't act on his own, but he only does what the father tells him to do. Um, that's important because if we, if we separate those acts of the Trinity, too much.
If we, we'd see them as separable acts, then we end up with three completely separate actors, and that's the road to tri theism heresy sound effect.
[00:49:18] Jesse Schwamb: Heresy alert. Right. That's why for me it's, I've always learned that it's, you're a much stronger in firmer ground if you focus on distinguishing rather than separating.
Right. As soon as you start to make draw lines of demarcation that are separate, then you're liable to run right into all kinds of trouble.
[00:49:35] Tony Arsenal: Right, and that's what we mean when we say God does this, God does whatever it is, whatever verb it is. When we say God does this, we don't mean there's some sort of fourth actor in the Trinity.
There's not some sort of fourth agency or some unified agency. What we have is three agents, three agencies. That are acting in a radically unified way that's more unified than anything we can ever imagine. And uh, Mike Horton, I think, puts it really well. I don't have the page number in front of me, but he says they don't do the same thing, but they don't act separately.
They act together, but differently. So the father does something and the son does something, and the spirit does something, and it's not the same thing, but they're acting in a way that is radically unified towards creation. Now, when we talk about the add inter activities, we don't know a lot about it, but obviously the father loves the son.
Well, the son, the son, I guess we could say the son loves the son, but it's not the same activity, right? It's not the exact same thing. So the persons act upon each other or towards each other in a way, uh, in a sense. You know, add intra, and we don't need to get into that too much. Um, but it's really the external acts.
We have to remember that the father, son, and spirit always act in a united way. And that, again, is really important when we're talking about the, the eternal functional submission of the son. Um, that EFS controversy, it, it really destroys this inseparable operations, um, in a way that just really just collapses into tri theism.
And then they throw a little bit of Arianism in there and the sons doesn't, isn't as worthy of glory as the the father is, and it's a big mess. Um, but if we can keep our head around that, um, that the father, son and Spirit act in a radically unified way towards creation, such that they are acting as persons, but as persons who are radically unified, then we go a long way into not sort of stumbling into some of those heretical ways of thinking.
[00:51:31] Jesse Schwamb: Right. That's well said.
[00:51:33] Tony Arsenal: So let's, let's um, do a couple questions. So before we do the questions, if I don't get to your question, um, you're probably in the majority 'cause there was like a thousand questions and, um, we have about 10 minutes left before we have to wrap. So, um, we will try in the future to co you know, compilate compilate to correlate all of these questions and try to do like a question and answer session.
Um, but I wanted to try to hit a couple of these. So, um, we had, um, Chuck wanted to know about the invisible, invisible operations, which we just talked about. Uh, let's see, you got a good question in there that you think would be good to talk about.
[00:52:15] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, your wife asked what Christmas candy is most like the trinity.
[00:52:19] Tony Arsenal: Uh, there is no analogy that I'm comfortable using. All analogies lead you. You passed the
[00:52:25] Jesse Schwamb: test.
[00:52:25] Tony Arsenal: Yes. All analogies lead to heresy, uh, in one form of another. So that doesn't mean we can't, we can't rightfully use analogies in helping us understand the trinity, but we need to understand that what we're doing is telling us what the trinity is not like.
Exactly. So we can talk about the egg tri, the egg analogy, or St. Patrick's clover or the water steam vapor, whatever it is. But what we need to do is use those to set up boundaries to, to give us some buffers. Um, but don't use analogies. Don't try to, don't try to explain to kids, um, with some of these analogies what, um, what the trinity is like.
'cause you're just gonna teach 'em to be heretics.
[00:53:05] Jesse Schwamb: Is the candy cane like one of those analogies? Because I feel like that's coming up and I, I'm not familiar with that.
[00:53:11] Tony Arsenal: Um, I feel like I've heard that before. Let's see what Google
[00:53:15] Jesse Schwamb: says. Like the what, the two different, the mint and peppermint or, I don't know, like the two types of candy intertwined.
What's the third component? The cane.
[00:53:21] Tony Arsenal: I don't know, but when I looked up Candy Cane Trinity, I got a lot of stuff about, I think some sort of school, the Holy Trinity Candy Cane Classic basketball tournament. So there must be a school that did a basketball fundraiser that was like a Christmas basketball tournament.
[00:53:38] Jesse Schwamb: I, I'd like to think it's just some elaborate analogy using basketball
[00:53:43] Tony Arsenal: and candy canes. Basketball and candy canes. Yeah. Um, so I did have one person who asked me, um, there's sort of an analogy that I've used in the past, um, to try to help explain this to kids. And, um, I, I'm. I'm hesitant, but kids are, are sort of a situation where you have to kind of give them partial information about complicated subjects depending on their age.
And so the easiest way that I've, I've come across to explain to kids is you start by explaining, you know, mommy and daddy are, we're both humans, right? So you can look at mommy and know she's a human, and you can look at me and know that I'm a human because there's some things about us that all people share, right?
So you use that, that commonality between persons to explain what a nature is. And then you explain how, um, you know, mommy can go in the other room and she's separate from me, or someone can take mommy away and, and keep her away from me. We can be separated and that's not good. But the persons of the Trinity are not like that.
They, they are connected in a way that you can never separate them. You can never think about the father without thinking about the son or without thinking about the spirit. And right there, um, you have the fundamental. Elements of the trinity in place. You have the unity of nature and the inseparability of nature, and you also have the diversity of persons.
And you know, with kids, you shouldn't feel like you have to have them quoting the Westminster Confession of Faith, you know, at like four years old. It's okay for them not to really understand the Trinity. Um, and you know what, to be frank, like a 25-year-old or a 45-year-old, it's okay for them. You know, we talked about how people have this vague sense of oneness and threeness.
And to be honest, for most people, that is just fine. Um, you know, it's, it's important to set up boundaries and to be clear about what the Trinity's not, but within those boundaries there's a lot of flexibility and a lot of ways that we can articulate the Trinity, right. Um, that aren't all right. Um, but they're not all heresy either.
And in something that is an infinite mystery where God is so radically different from what we are, I think it's okay to sort of rest in some of that mystery.
[00:55:54] Jesse Schwamb: I agree. That's well said. It's great for us to have, we should always be reforming in such a way that we have a healthy knowledge and understanding of the trinity.
[00:56:03] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.
[00:56:03] Jesse Schwamb: But it's also comforting though, that God has given us enough in his word to, uh, learn studying and for what is the most important, making the plain things the main things right. And that we can rest in that.
[00:56:15] Tony Arsenal: Right. So, um, one last question. Um, well two last questions. One person in a Facebook group I'm in, uh, asked is your podcast on iTunes?
Uh, the answer is yes. Our podcast is on iTunes and you should rate and review us, uh, and share us with friends. Um, you can just search the Reformed Brotherhood, uh, on the iTunes search box, and, uh, if you find it rate and review us, that'd be great. But a question about the Trinity, um, was, is a believing, understanding the doctrine of the Trinity essential to being a believer?
Can't I just believe in God and his love for me? And, um, the answer is yes and no. So, um, you have to believe that God is a trinity. And there's two reasons for that. The first is that that's what the Bible tells us, right? The Bible reveals, um, you can't consistently interpret the Bible without something like the doctrine of the Trinity.
Um, you know, you have, you have God is one in the Shema, and then you have, um, the word is God and the word was with God right there. You have to have something like the doctrine of the Trinity in order to understand that. So that's the first reason why it's, it's vital for a believer is if you want to take the Bible seriously and, and believe that it doesn't contain contradictions, you have to have something like the doctor with the truth.
Me. Um, and then the second part of it is, can't I just believe in God and his love for me? Um, the answer in a sense is, sure, but what is that love? What does that love do? What does that love look like? Right. Well, that love is that God and his eternal son and his eternal spirit loved, loved sinners so much that his son became one of us and that his son died and then sent his spirit.
So you can just believe in God's love for us. But again, if you're taking the Bible seriously, that that love acts in a specific way and you have to have the doctrine of the Trinity in order to understand and really embrace how that love operates.
[00:58:08] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly. 'cause as you said earlier, love always leads to giving.
[00:58:12] Tony Arsenal: Right.
[00:58:12] Jesse Schwamb: So we understand in John 16 that God so loved the world that he gave. That is kind of the. The manifest demonstration of love. And if you're saying God is love and just you're making it refer in the sense that, God, I know God is love because he loves me. Well, right then we're saying that that love does not predate you or humanity for that matter.
Right? So we've confused things already. So this is why it is really important. You're right to get some particulars down so that we have a better appreciation for the, the Godhead in its person.
[00:58:42] Tony Arsenal: Right. And I think it's really important too, is if you're listening to this and you're a person who's sitting here going, I don't understand the Trinity at all.
Um, you are like the vast majority of people in the church. And um, there's a big difference between someone who sits back and recognizes God is really hard to understand. And I'm gonna get things wrong, but I, I wanna be faithful to the Bible. Right? And I, I trust that the church has faithfully interpreted the Bible and I understand that, um, God somehow is one and somehow is three, and that there's three persons that's.
That's very different from somebody who is willfully rejecting those facts. So I, I like to say that you can't be a heretic on accident. And what I mean by that is not that you can't hold heretical views unwittingly, but the, the word heretic or heresy in the scriptures, actually the root word is choice.
And a heretic is somebody who knows what the church teaches and knows what the historical understanding of the Bible is and willfully rejects that. And you can't do that on accident. So if you are kind of a person that thinks like, oh man, I don't know if I understand the Trinity well enough to be saved.
Um, that's, that's not how it works. Right, exactly. If you're willing to say that, um, you know, I don't understand how it works, but I trust what scripture says, and I believe that the church has, has a faithful teaching, you know, represented in the nice creed and other kind of ecclesiastical documents. Um, because that's what the Bible teaches, then you don't have to worry if you, if you get elements wrong here and there, you, you're not.
You know, be condemned because you, you put an eye in the wrong spot in some sort of, um, ecumenical creed or something like that.
[01:00:20] Jesse Schwamb: Sometimes we use heresy, obviously, tongue in cheek, and that's not to be an excuse for good accountability for good theology, but you're exactly right. Like, I want anybody to feel, including myself, like this sense that though I'm well intentioned and I'm trying as best I can to understand and express that knowledge and to be encouraged by it and to let it be saturated with scripture, that for some reason, because I've, I've used the wrong analogy at some point, uh, in some conversation that I've somehow crossed like this line of heresy, of which there's, from which there's no return, right.
[01:00:55] Tony Arsenal: Right. Absolutely.
[01:00:56] Tony Arsenal: So I think that probably just about does it again, we, you know, we could have gone for another hour easy. We could have, we could have spent a whole, you know,
[01:01:03] Jesse Schwamb: for sure
[01:01:04] Tony Arsenal: we could have done a thousand episodes on the Trinity and just been barely scratching the surface. So, Jesse, do you have any, uh, kind of closing thoughts or, or maybe something practical that we can, can take out, uh, as we go back to our lives to, to really put some rubber on this?
[01:01:18] Jesse Schwamb: So I thought that this podcast might need like a heresy horn that we could just sound, you know, when, when heresy occurs. So of course, I went to the only place I thought I could buy one, which was Amazon and I was really underwhelmed. Oh, with the search results, just for the record,
[01:01:31] Tony Arsenal: they don't make a heresy horn.
[01:01:33] Jesse Schwamb: No, apparently not. It's some, um, interesting French horns did come up. Um, I don't know if those have traditionally been used to call it heresy, but you know, I'm down with that.
[01:01:43] Tony Arsenal: Interesting. You know what we could do? We should make a game that's like that taboo game, but it's like heresy. We could call it like heresy.
And basically like you get a doctrine on a card and you have to explain the doctrine, and then someone listens and buzzes you when you say something heretical.
[01:02:01] Jesse Schwamb: That's fantastic that that's a party game, right?
[01:02:03] Tony Arsenal: I feel like that would be more fun than the Joel Olsteen game.
[01:02:07] Jesse Schwamb: That it, it would have better gameplay already.
The rules make more sense,
[01:02:11] Tony Arsenal: right?
[01:02:11] Jesse Schwamb: Like I would say if you're looking for an interesting time, and particularly maybe in reforming some of your theology and having excuse to have some really interesting conversations, you should definitely go to Amazon. Look up the, uh, Joel Olsteen your Best Life Now game.
Just the reviews by themselves are entertaining. They're worth it.
[01:02:31] Tony Arsenal: Yes. All right. Well, I think that probably does it. So as you go out this week, um, just remember that we serve a great God and that the Father demonstrated his love for us by giving his son and his son died for us and he sent his spirit for us.
And there's really nothing better that we can think of than that. So just rest in that truth and, uh, we'll see you next week.
[01:02:53] Jesse Schwamb: Amen.