Systematic Theology Study Notes 6-10

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Lecture 6 - September 29, 2009         (downloadable/printable notes) 

Doctrine of God (continued)

1.                  The existence of God has not always been questioned.  Most people in Biblical times and sooner automatically assumed God’s existence.  Most people felt as the Psalmist says in Psalm 14, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

2.                  The question was not does God exist but what kind of god exists and how must he be served?   Yet after the so called age of enlightenment, it has been fashionable, especially in academic and scientific circles, to question the existence of God.

3.                  Today the argument for the existence of God in Christian circles is called apologetics. The Greek word apologia, which is where we get the word apologetics, is not concerned about how we say we are sorry, but about making a legal case in defense of the existence of God.

4.                  There is apologetics in the Bible but it is more like making a defense for the gospel, the kind of God that the New Testament presents rather than a defense against atheism itself.  Paul speaks so in Philippians 1:7 when he says, “it is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I have you in my  heart, and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and establishment of the gospel.”

5.                  Peter says much of the same when he writes: “But set apart the Messiah as Lord in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3: 15-16).

6.                  We see Paul actually practicing apologetics of the Gospel in Athens on Mars Hill. Read Acts 17:22-34.  But again, it not do you believe in God’s existence but what kind of god do you believe in.  Paul says in verse 17, “therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it—He is Lord of Heaven and earth and does not live in shrines made by hands.” 

7.                  In the sense of defending the gospel, the claims of Jesus and the practices of the church, Christians have always practiced apologetics.   Yet in actually making a case for the existence of God that is a different matter—that is modern day apologetics.

8.                  It is an endeavor to provide a reasonable account of the grounds for believing in the Christian faith (McKim, page 15).  It is not finding a foolproof case for the existence of God as many might believe they can argue for.  For example, Doug Powell states that one of the underlying assumptions of our society (in which he challenges) is that God’s existence cannot be proven (Holman Quick Source Guide to Christian Apologetics, page 8).

9.                  I don’t believe that we can find the existence of God in a proof or anything for that matter that is not faith based or faith argued. Hebrews 11: 3 states, “by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” If we can only argue that God is the Creator of the Universe by faith, how much more do we have to argue the existence of the Creator by faith?

10.              Still, I do believe in the merit of apologetics to point to God or at least make a good case for His existence, the reliability of the Bible, and the basis of the Gospel itself.  We can inform, argue, and even refute the claims of the skeptics of Christianity, but ultimately it is by faith that the Holy Spirit convinces people of God’s existence and the reliability of His Word.

11.              Some might be discouraged to hear this statement of faith, but I also believe that the existence of God cannot be disproven as well.  Skeptics can write all the books they want about how foolish it is to believe in God, but ultimately what they say is a faith statement as well with more problems and unanswered questions than Christians have to contend with.  Ultimately at the end of the day (or if one is fortunate before he or she dies), all important and difficult questions of our existence have to be reasoned with and accepted or rejected by faith.

12.              The following are the traditional “proofs” for the existence of God.  While each one has merit, it could be argued and indeed is argued that each one is based on unproven assumptions.  See Wayne Gruden’s assertion in his Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine that the following proofs are indeed valid (page 144).

• Cosmological

• Teleological

• Ontological

• Moral argument

Incomprehensibility of God

13.              With all the talk of revelation and knowing God, we might assume that knowing God is a fairly easy thing to do if we just have faith in the God that our Bible presents.  To which most evangelicals would hardly say amen and nod their head in agreement yet it is not as easy as it might sound to many of us. First of all, even to the very best of us, God has a way of remaining hidden.  For example, Moses, when asked to know God’s name on Mt. Sinai, was told very cryptically that God was “I am who I am.” Scholars have been debating for centuries what that simple little phrase of recognition might mean.  In other scriptures, Elijah hears the voice of God not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a small still voice (1 Kings 19:11ff); and Isaiah declares in 1 Kings 19:11ff, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

Lecture 7 - October 6, 2009          (downloadable/printable notes)

Incomprehensibility of God (continued)

1.                  (Review) With all the talk of revelation and knowing God, we might assume that knowing God is a fairly easy thing to do if we just have faith in the God that our Bible presents.  To which most evangelicals would hardly say amen and nod their head in agreement yet it is not as easy as it might sound to many of us. First of all, even to the very best of us, God has a way of remaining hidden.  For example, Moses, when asked to know God’s name on Mt. Sinai, was told very cryptically that God was “I am who I am.” Scholars have been debating for centuries what that simple little phrase of recognition might mean.  In other scriptures, Elijah hears the voice of God not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a small still voice (1 Kings 19:11ff); and Isaiah declares in 1 Kings 19:11ff, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

2.                  One reason that God is hidden from us is that our minds cannot grasp the infinite.  We cannot begin to grasp the vastness and magnitude of God’s created universe let alone the vastness of an infinite God.  Look at Isaiah 40: 22, 25-26 to see how Isaiah is reminded of the greatness of God.  It is the thought of the great God, the Shepherd of the universe, moving though His universe, with its infinite time and space, with stars and maybe worlds so big that our whole solar system would be like a grain of sand by comparison.   That God stands in and out of this great expanse and calls all of these stars and worlds like sheep; He calls them all by name and leads them across our sky. 

3.                  Look at the last part of verse 26: “because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”  Just as Jesus the Good Shepherd keeps all of His sheep and not one of them is lost, so God keeps all of His universe.  “Men point their tiny little glasses at the stars and talk learnedly” about what they can only guess about, but in truth all they’ve been able to do is count “God’s sheep, nothing more.  God is running His universe” (A.W. Tozer, The Attributes of God, page 25).

4.                  Such a wondrous and glorious God, whose power and might we cannot begin to imagine.  So much so today, as much as we know about the vastness of the universe we can certainly echo what Isaiah says: “To whom will compare me? Or who is my equal?” (40:25).

5.                  Let me try to illustrate what we are up against when the finite begins to contemplate the infinite by the following illustration.  Suppose that I was holding a tiny grain of sand between my fingers, and this grain of sand represented a finite person such as human being. If we put that grain of sand in a circle the size of the moon would that adequately compare the difference between the finite and the infinite, between us and God? No!

6.                  Well, suppose the circle the size of the moon was the grain of sand that was inside a larger circle that would somehow be in the same portion that the grain of sand was to the moon, would that adequately compare us to God?  No!

7.                  What if that unimaginable circle became the grain of sand inside an even larger circle that would somehow be in portion to the grain of sand to the size of the moon would that be how it would be for a finite human being compared to infinite God? No.

8.                  The comparison could go on exponentially and it still would not adequately compare the infinite concept of God, to what we understand as a finite human being.  

9.                  The point I am trying to get across is that the more we know about the universe (and our knowledge of the universe is expanding) the more our understanding of God has to grow.  Is our understanding of God too small, as J.B Phillips states in his little book? Most definitely, it is!!  However, to some so much so than others.

Personhood of God (Erickson, pages 294-297)

10.              With the vastness of God properly considered, many folks are tempted to ignore the personal nature of God.  For example, even as far back as the 19^th century philosopher Georg Hegel, whose philosophy influenced much of the 19^th century theology, believed in the Absolute, a great spirit or mind that encompasses all things within itself.  In Hegel’s way of seeing things, reality as a whole was one great thinking mind, and all of what most people consider to be finite objects and persons were simply thoughts in the mind of the Absolute. There is no personal self-consciousness about this being, no personality to which one can relate (Erickson, page 295).

11.              Biblical theology is different.  God is personal and very capable of feeling, choosing, and having relationships with other personal and social beings.   According to Erickson, God’s personality is indicated several ways: One is the name of God. In Exodus 3:14, after Moses asks God who is sending Him to Egypt, it reads: “And God said to Moses, “I am who I am” and God said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, “I am has sent me to you.”

12.              “I am” is derived from the Hebrew verb HAYAH, to be, which when referring to God is translated to English simply as “Lord.” It was a very personal and holy way of declaring who this divine being was that was intervening in the lives of Moses and the children of Israel.   As cryptic and mysterious as this “I am who I am” might sound, it demonstrates that God Himself was not some nameless, abstract and unrecognizable force guiding Moses and the Israelites.  It was a name that, at least for a while, the Jews were to address this Holy God of Moses and Abraham. Then later on it would be so holy and so granted that Jews, at least more modern day Jews, would refuse to speak.  

13.              I am reminded of what Isaiah says when he had a vision of God appearing to him in the Temple: “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6: 5).  According to Erickson, the great respect accorded to the name indicates God’s personality (page 295).

14.              Well, you might be thinking how did they say the name of God if they couldn’t speak it?  Well, they substituted another name for His name.  For example, Adonai was used in Psalms 8; Isaiah 40:3-5, Ezekiel 16:8 and so forth; it means the Lord.  In Genesis 1:1-3 you have the name Elohim which is translated God in the English translations but has the loose meaning of The All-Powerful One or Creator.

15.               God’s name or the meanings of the names of God are usually taken from the various descriptions of what God has done or aspects of His character.  In a broad sense, God’s names are equal to all that the Bible and creation tell us about God’s character and His attributes (Grudem, page 157).

16.               I would like to give a list of characteristics of God taken from scripture and from creation to let you know how unique and personable that our God is. For example, God is compared to: 
         
          a lion (Isaiah 31:4)
          an eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11)
          a lamb (Isaiah 53:7)
          a hen (Matthew 23:37)
          the sun (Psalm 84:11)
          the morning star (Revelation 22:16)
          a light (Psalm 27:1)
          a torch (Revelation 21:23)
          a fire (Hebrews 12:29)
          a fountain (Psalm 36: 9)
          a rock (Deuteronomy 32:4)
          a hiding place (Psalm 119:114)
          a tower (Proverb 18: 10)
          a shadow (Psalm 91: 1)
          a shield (Psalm 84: 11)
          a temple (Revelation 21:22) 

The point being is that all of creation reveals something about the personal nature of God to us.  It tells us something about this wonderful God that we worship and serve who has chosen to reveal Himself to us. 

17.              Even human beings and their experiences are used to describe some of God’s personal characteristics.   For example, God is called:

          a bridegroom (Isaiah 61:10)
          husband (Isaiah 54:5)
          father (Deuteronomy 32:6)
          judge and King (Isaiah 33:22)
          man of war (Exodus 15:3)
          builder and maker (Hebrews 11:10)
          shepherd (Psalm 23)
          physician (Exodus 15:26)  

18.              Furthermore, God is spoken of in terms of human actions such as:

          knowing (Genesis 18:21)
          remembering (Genesis 8:1)

          seeing (Genesis 1:10)
          hearing (Exodus 2:24)
          smelling (Genesis 8:21)
          tasting (Psalm 11: 5)
          sitting (Psalm 9:7)
          rising (Psalm 68:1)
          walking (Leviticus 26:12)
          wiping away tears (Isaiah 25:8), and so forth 

19.              Human emotions are attributed to God, such as:

          joy (Isaiah 62:5)
          grief (Psalm 78:40)
          anger (Jeremiah 7:18-19)
          love (John 3:16)
          hatred (Deuteronomy 16:22)
          wrath (Psalm 2:5)

20.              But why all these different metaphors to explain God—because really God’s unique personality and character cannot be understood in terms that we are not familiar with. 

21.              The Bible speaks of God in human terms and terms of the creation because He has to teach us in terms of what we know and what we are familiar with in our own experiences.

22.              God made the universe so that it would show forth the excellence of his personal character and name, and that we should honor his name and his unique personality.

23.              The bottom line is that God is a living, reciprocating being.  He is not merely one of whom we hear, but one whom we meet and know (Erickson, page 296).

24.              In short, we don’t treat God as an object or force to be used or manipulated.  He is not something to be used or necessarily even to solve all our problems.  He is not an end in himself, nor a means to meet some end that we might magically conjure Him up for.

Attributes of God

25.              See Grudem and Erickson

October 13 - No class

October 20 - Review

October 27 - Mid-term testing

Lecture 8 - November 3, 2009          (downloadable/printable notes)

Attributes of God

1.                  The true essence of God cannot be defined; at least that’s been the position of most theologians.  Actually it makes perfect sense because we cannot understand who we are as finite human beings, much less the infinite God.

2.                  The closest we can come to understanding the nature of God is what John declares in 1 John 4:8 that “God is love,” but that doesn’t cover all what He may be.

3.                  The best we can do to understand the nature or the essence of God is to look at His attributes. Those characteristics that theologians and clergymen have decided best describe the God of scriptures.

4.                  The first that we’ll consider is the one the Greek philosophers have helped bring to light—the eternity of God.  We won’t go back and rehash our discussion of that over again except to say that somehow God stands above time and is able to see it all as present in consciousness.  Grudem (page 171) uses the analogy of reading a long novel of the history of mankind from beginning to end then putting it back on the bookshelf. Yet before you put it back, you flip through the pages and recall word for word what you’ve read.

5.                  I would add that the novel, while having the ending decided, is still evolving in the mind of God as it is put back on the shelf. Isaiah 46: 9-10 says: “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’”

Think like a theologian for a moment – what if He is writing the history novel as He is putting it back on the shelf?  What kind of problems does that create? Determinism is the biggest problem (yet is such a  thing as free will or just wishful thinking on our part?); but maybe, there could be different plot lines, different choices that could branch off in different directions (allowing a measure of free will) while ultimately ending up where God wants it to be.  I see God nurturing His creation in the direction He wants it to go, while being reluctant to violently bend it to His will. Maybe that’s what makes history so long, allowing the infinite possibilities and infinite outcomes to ultimately work out in the mind of God as He would have to. 

6.                  Another characteristic of God that Philosophers and theologians alike are fond of is the perfection of God. Grudem’s definition of the perfection of God is that God completely possesses everything that would be desirable for Him to possess (Grudem, page 218).   Paul says in Acts 17: 24 & 25 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything because He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”   Jesus also tells His disciples that they are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). 

7.                  At the risk of being redundant, you might say that God is not only perfection but also “absolute perfection.” In other words, God alone is perfection in the absolute! Beyond our wildest and grandest imagination, God is perfect.  In fact, some people have suggested that God is simple perfection.  Simple not as something that is elementary or easy to grasp (because God cannot be grasped or completely understood) but that God is simple in the sense that God has no parts, that He is absolute oneness in the most perfect sense.

8.                  God is absolutely divinely perfect within and of Himself.  He does not grow nor change because when you are absolutely divinely perfect as God is, you do not need anything else to make yourself better.  There is no better you! You’re God and because you don’t need anything there is no better and improved you to become. Amen (unless you advocate Process theology, see Grudem page 166)!! 

9.                  However, we mean that God cannot change for the better and certainly cannot change for the worse—He is absolutely perfect as He is. 

10.              Following upon the idea of God being simple—no parts, everything that God has He is.   For example, God doesn’t have love, he is Love.  God doesn’t have mercy, he is Mercy.  God doesn’t have light, he is Light.  God doesn’t have goodness, He is Goodness.   We may have some of these attributes but God is these things and more.

11.              You might say who we are is a collection of these things and more. But God’s essence is not just a collection of the following attributes: love, justice, wisdom, holiness, wrath, blessedness, omnipresence, independence, truth, omnipotence, mercy, intellect, jealousy, and so on (see Grudem, page 178, figure 11.2).

12.              Neither are these attributes merely just additions to His real being (like Grudem has on page 179, figure 11.3), however, we might maintain that these attributes are expressions of a greater more mysterious being that we cannot begin to grasp.

13.              Grudem says that whatever God is we must remember that God’s whole being includes all of His attributes: he is entirely loving, entirely just, entirely truthful. Mercy, good and so forth. “Every attribute of God that we find in Scripture is true of all God’s being, and we therefore can say that every attribute of God also qualifies every attribute” (Grudem, page 179, see figure 11.4 & 11.5).

14.              All of this leads us to say once more that God is Simple, meaning that He is unified whole, the completely integrated person who is infinitely perfect in all the these attributes.  Hence, each of these attributes when referring to God should be capitalized.

15.              It is very inappropriate to speak of the Old Testament God as being the God of wrath and the New Testament God being the God of love (sounds too much like Maricon).  He is the same God always, and everything he says or does is fully consistent at all times with all of His attributes. There are no contradictions in the nature and person of God.  According to Grudem, page 180, the unity of God should caution us against attempting to single out any one attribute of God as more important than all the others.  Do you agree?

16.              The only reason we know about these characteristics of God is that we have seen them in God’s created order.   For example, in Genesis 1 the writer  repeatedly says that what God called into being He declared good.  Because God is good what He creates is good, he doesn’t make anything evil or bad.  God always acts like God – a good Creator only creates things that are good.  

17.              We can take it deeper because God creates things that are good, therefore everything is like  God the Creator or at least reflects the Creator’s goodness and beauty- For example a tree (like the one on 71) might reflect the goodness and beauty of God, but God is not like a tree. God is not like any created thing, but every created thing is somehow like God. Other religions see an even greater connection between God and the creation.  See Rose publications  worldviews: pantheism, panentheism.  Let me say it again, everything in some way is like God, but God is not like anything He created.  God defines His Creation, His creation doesn’t define God.  The connection is a one way street.  Because the Creator is so much greater than the creation.

Lecture 9 - November 10, 2009  (downloadable/printable notes)                      

 The Holy Trinity

1.                  Before we begin with the Trinity, let’s review the attributes of God and how that relates to the person of God.  Love, justice, holiness, blessedness, wisdom, truthfulness, mercy, knowledge, power, perfection, Omni-presence, represent some of the attributes of God that is found in the scriptures.  These attributes become the means by which we can talk and think about God, however they are not representative of whom we believe God to be.
 

2.                  Yes most of us believe God is love, but you have to also realize that God is more than love.  His being is infinitely more complex than love, as important as love is.  This has led some to believe that God is the sum total of all the attributes that the Bible speaks of.  But most theologians are not very pleased with this understanding of God.

3.                  Others might see God’s attributes as simply something that has been added on to His mysterious and unknown being (see Grudem page 179).  But the classical theologians believe that God’s whole being includes all of his attributes in their entirety.

4.                  So you might say that God is entirely loving, entirely good, entirely merciful, entirely just, entirely Holy, so on and so forth. Every attribute of God that we find in Scripture is true of all of God’s being and therefore qualifies and enriches every other attribute of God.

5.                  This paradoxical language is very important in doing Christian theology.  Many things that we believe cannot be said and done without language that sounds contradictory in nature.  For example, Jesus Christ is said to be fully human and fully divine at the same time.  Christian believers are thought to be “righteous yet sinners”, and the one that we are considering tonight, “one God in three Persons.”

6.                  Jews in general and others in particular have a difficult time with our Trinity. To them it sounds like we are worshiping three Gods, not one which is basic to their faith.  Even one of our nation’s founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, remarked that the doctrine of the Trinity was a “metaphysical insanity” that “hindered the religious growth of humanity and represented relapse into polytheism, differing from paganism by being more unintelligible” (Christian Theology by Alister McGrath, page 245).

7.                  Yet this seemly “unintelligible” doctrine is one that for centuries we have taken to express the basic beliefs of our faith.

8.                  The doctrine of the Trinity is one that goes back to the New Testament, but reached a classical, mature, intellectual, and theological formulation in the 4^th and 5^th century. To better understand the formation of this and other doctrines, it would help to remember that the early church has not always been a church of one accord.  In fact as you well know, the early church could not even agree on what was actually Holy Writ until the 4^th century.  Look at the Johannine handout on Orthodoxy and Cannon.

9.                  With the legalization of Christianity and it consequential immergence as the official religion of the Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine wanted religious and doctrinal conformity in his empire.  So he pushed for the beginning of a series of religious councils which would seek to bring doctrinal uniformity to Christianity.  The first was the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.; the second was the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. with the 7^th council ending up in 787A.D., well after his death. During these religious councils many of the Christian doctrines we take for granted were argued and fleshed out.

10.              The actual word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and was not coined until the 2^nd and 3^rd century by one of the church fathers named Tertullian.  Yet the concept of the Trinity is found in the New Testament in well known scriptures like Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” and 2 Corinthians 13:13, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

11.              But these two verses in and of themselves are not enough to establish a doctrine of the Trinity. There is in the New Testament a Trinitarian pattern of divine activity that speaks loudly to the doctrine of Trinity.  The pattern is namely that the Father is revealed in Christ through the Holy Spirit.   The totality of God’s presence can be expressed best by involving the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  For example, the following scriptures illustrate this pattern in the New Testament: 1 Corinthians 12:4-6; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Galatians 4:6; Ephesians 2:20-22; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14; Titus 3:4-6; and 1 Peter 1:2.  

12.               The doctrine of the Trinity can be summed up by saying that “there is one God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  That in itself is a simple statement but that’s about all that is simple about it.

13.              Let’s look at the theological roots of our doctrine of the Trinity (turn to Erickson, page 348ff). Basic to our faith and the faith of Judaism and Islam is the oneness of God.  We believe that there is only one God.  Every other representation of God is a false god, and should be, by its very nature, rejected.  And really at this time in human history, polytheism is a very old and outdated way of understanding the concept of a supernatural being or beings.
 

14.              The very heart and soul of Judaism is Deuteronomy 6:4.   The New Testament also affirms the belief in one God which James states, 2:19, “You believe in one God. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder.”  Paul states in 1 Corinthians 8:4, “We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.” Paul writes to Timothy: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…” 1Timothy 2:5-6.

15.              With this evidence, we are obviously monotheistic, but when we start talking about the deity of Jesus we run into trouble (see Erickson, page 350 2^nd paragraph; see Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 1:1-3).

16.              What about Jesus’ own self-awareness of being God (see Erickson, page 351)?

17.              The deity of Holy Spirit, see Erickson, page 352.

18.              The next theological basis of the Trinity is three-in-Oneness (see Erickson pages 352-358).

19.              See Phillip Cary Teaching Company – The History of Christian Theology, vol. 1, page 152ff; what is the doctrine of Trinity? What does it really say?  The church Father, Augustine, gave us a good summary of the Trinity.  These are his seven statements that make up the Christian understanding of Trinity.

1.                  The Father is God

2.                  The Son is God

3.                  The Holy Spirit is God

4.                  The Father is not the Son

5.                  The Son is not the Holy Spirit

6.                  The Holy Spirit is not the Father

7.                  There is one God and only one God

20.              Augustine was writing in the 5^th century, how does Christianity get to this point and these 7 affirmations of the Trinity?  Historians tell us that in the 2^nd century there became a group of theologians that were Logos theologians.  Logos means word to us, but to Greek thinkers Logos means reason.  To which they might say that in the beginning there was the word, or the Reason of God.

21.              They came to treat the Logos as another God.  In fact, Justin the Martyr actually referred to the Logos as being “another God.”  The Logos to them was an intermediary between God and the Creation.  The Epistle of Hebrews speaks of Jesus, our intermediary, who makes intersession on our behalf.  These folks believed that Jesus was a halfway between God and Creation.   Jehovah Witnesses today see Jesus as a second class god between us and Jehovah. These folks are subordinationists who make Jesus out to be a second class god.

22.              There was a more radical subordinationist that came to ask a very important question. If Jesus is not fully God in every sense, what is He? Christianity has always been committed to the idea that there are only two kinds of beings: the Creator and the Creation.  There is no third kind of being.  Arius (subordinationist) asked the logical question, “Well what was the Logos, creator or creation?  He chose that Jesus was a part of the creation.  In fact, he dared to say: “There was a time when He was not.”  He, like us, was created out of nothing.  There was a time when He didn’t exist.  It tore folks apart.  To them, Jesus was eternal.  The early church dealt with this problem in the Council of Nicaea in 325 with the Nicene Creed.  In part it states: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.  We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made…”

23.              He was begotten not made, the same essence as the Father.  What is the difference between begotten and not made?  Well one, John 3:16 says “that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…”  It does not say God gave his only created sons…we are his created children.  My father and mother begot me, my wife and I begot our three children.  I wasn’t created by my parents and I haven’t created my children.  We don’t make our children.

24.              For the doctrine of the Trinity, we say “one God in three Persons.”  What do we mean by persons?  The Nicene Creed says “of the same being or essence as the Father.”  What is the essence of God? We don’t know, but whatever it is the Father and the Son are the same.

25.              The same essence comes from the Greek word homoousios. It can be translated “of the same being” or of the same substance.   It means that Christ does not come out of nothing like the creation does.  He comes out of God the Father and is the very same essence of the Father.  Again, Jesus is not a second class citizen.  He is not subordinate to the Father.

26.              Remember Arius taught that as far as Jesus was concerned, “there was a time when He was not,” the First Council of Nicaea rejected that heresy, saying instead that Jesus was begotten from the Father and still being the same essence of the Father was eternal.   He has always existed, but yet the Son was begotten by the Father owing his existence to the Father.

27.              This is the mystery of the Trinity not the business of the threeness and oneness but about this eternal generation—how Jesus is eternal like the Father yet begotten of the Father.

28.              See Erickson, page 362, Essential Elements of the Doctrine of the Trinity.  As someone has said of this doctrine:   “Try to explain it, and you’ll lose your mind; but try to deny it, and you’ll lose your soul.”