Good morning, everyone. And welcome to Sunday school. Welcome back to Sunday school. The Pope gives 10 years off purgatory for everyone who comes to the 8 AM Spanish service. It's just a five-year discount for coming to Sunday school, but that's better than nothing. So congratulations on your five years off. We're going to resume our study of our confession of faith, and we're in chapter two. If you wanna open the back of your hymnal to page 671, you can read there. The idea behind the study of our confession is, the obvious part is this is our church's confession, and we want to not just repeat the words, but teach the concepts and prove the concepts and defend the concepts, the doctrine that's contained in it. Also, to give some historical background, the Confession of Faith gives you the summary conclusions, and I want to help you become more familiar with the literature that stands behind those summary conclusions. So there's always a balance that I have to try to maintain between too much information and too little information. And in chapter two of God and the Holy Trinity, I said when we started this chapter that I wanted to err on the side of more information here because this is one of the most, if not the most foundational doctrines that we believe. In our confession of faith, certain chapters are more difficult or more complex this one of God and the Holy Trinity, the next one of God's decree, chapter eight of Christ the Mediator, those are probably the thickest, the densest, the most nuanced and complicated chapters in our confession, and so they therefore merit the most attention, so we understand them well. Because they're so important to get right, they're more dangerous to get wrong, and they therefore merit more attention. In this lesson, I'm going to review what we covered in Chapter 2 of our Confession last semester. And so this is just going to be a review lesson, and then starting next week, we will continue on moving forward. So if you've opened to page 671, or if you have a different copy of the Confession, that's perfectly fine. I'd like to read again part of paragraph one, as far as we've studied, and then walk through nine points that we've covered to this point in the study of chapter two, paragraph one of our Confession of Faith. So here's what we've covered so far in reading from our Confession, Chapter 2, Paragraph 1. We confess the Lord our God is but one, only, living and true God, whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions. And let's pause there because that's as far as we have studied up to this point. Now there's nine things that we have covered in our study of the confession in this paragraph up to this point. We're going to briefly summarize and review those nine points this morning in preparation for future lessons. The first thing that we covered is the unique and exclusive existence of God. Let me put the brakes on this thing. we confess that the Lord our God is but one only living and true God. And here we see the unique and exclusive existence or being of God. Existence isn't a great word for God. We'll talk about that in another moment. We confess that God is not the God of gods. He's not the best of them all. He's not the biggest of them all, as though there's a pantheon and God is at the top of it. We say that there is one God, and only one God. And that he is, he's not an idea or a principle, something like pantheism or panentheism, where God is more just an idea than a being, a personal being. So the unique one God, exclusive, the only God, the existence, the living and true God is what we confess. And the scriptures say this in many places. such as Isaiah 45 and verse 5, where God says, I am the Lord and there is no other. Besides me, there is no God. God makes a claim of absolute uniqueness and exclusivity in the category of deity. In fact, he's saying there is no category of deity. I am it. There is no other, so a category presumes multiple things. There is no category of deity, because God is God, and there is no other. So the exclusive and unique existence of God, the Lord our God, is but one, only, living, and true God. And the second one, the second point that we covered, or attribute, is divine aseity. Divine We confess that this one only living and true God, that his subsistence is in and of himself. God's subsistence is in and of himself. What does that mean? Well, to subsist, in a technical sense, as it's being used here in the confession, is to be in a certain way. To subsist is to be in a certain way. Subsistence is distinct from existence. Existence implies to be from, derived being, which is why existence properly does not apply to God. God does not exist as though he is from something, as though his being is dependent on something. God does not exist, he's not to be from. but rather to subsist is to be in a certain way. Well, in what way does God subsist? In what way is God? What is God's manner of being? We confess that God's manner of being, his subsistence, is a se, in and of himself. And if you recall, in Latin, a se means from oneself. So God's a se, Saiety is his being from himself. Why is God? Because God. There's no other or alternate or any different explanation for God's being. Divine auseity means the full and sufficient and only explanation for God's being is God himself. There's nothing prior to God that causes God to be God. There is absolutely nothing. His being, his subsistence, is in and of himself. He has being in himself and of himself. That doesn't mean that he causes himself. It's not like God is self-causing or in some way. There's no cause. He is uncaused. He is the one only living and true God whose subsistence is in and of himself. This unique and exclusive God is because he is. Sounds like his name. I am that I am. Of course. And we derive this not only, you can derive divine auseity from rational, logical arguments, natural theology can understand this rightly and truly, but the scriptures clearly assert it in places such as Romans 11, verse 36, which says, for from him and through him and to him are All things, if all things are from him, then he is from none, and if he is from none, then his subsistence is in and of himself. We also said that under this category, under the discussion of divine aseity, or God's being in and of himself, that this creates an absolute creator-creature distinction. where the way in which the creator is, is in and of himself. The way in which the creature is, is existence of God, of him, through him, to him. God is asse, his being is in and of himself. The creature is from him, through him, and to him, derived existence, created existence. That's why you can't create a category of existence and then sort it into God and creatures. That's not the way that it works. God's being is unique in and of himself. And all things not God... are creature. All things not God have their being from him and through him and to him. So if we want to investigate the nature of the creator-creature distinction, we said we can use various questions to interrogate that difference. We can ask the question of quantity or quality And we asked, are these sufficient concepts, sufficient questions for discerning the nature of the distinction between creator and creature being? Is the difference between the creator and the creature simply a matter of quantity? God has the most being, or all the being, and we have a slice of the pie. No, that would be pantheism, where God is the sum total of all being, and it's just a difference of quantity. We're just a little bit of it. No, that is, quantity is not the appropriate way to describe the creator-creature distinction. What about quality? Is quality the right way? God is of one kind, the creature is of another kind of being. That sounds right. It's a much more appropriate way of speaking, but it's still not correct, because I already mentioned that you can't make quality of what kind, if you speak Spanish, cual, which? if you're trying to discern the difference between God and creatures in terms of what kind, then you're presupposing some common parent category of which God and the creature are going to be distinct kinds or examples. And so quality also is not correct. That presumes that existence is the common category, and the creator exists in one way and the creature in another way. Again, that's getting closer to the truth, but it's not the real way or the most accurate and proper way to express the difference between the creator and the creature, because God is ase, and the creature is from him and through him and to him. And so we said that the real proper question for understanding the difference between the creator and the creature, based in divine aseity, is an uncommon word called quiddity. Quidd asks what? Kwan is how much, kwal is what kind, quid is what. If we ask what is God and what is the creature, then we will rightly and properly discern the distinction that what is God? The one only living and true God who is in and of himself. And then, what is the creature, the created thing that is from him and through him and to him? And now we're not talking two examples of a parent category, we're talking of two completely different things. The creator, who made all things, and the creatures whom he has made. So aseity leads to the creator-creature distinction, which is not a distinction of quantity or quality, but quiddity, what, of what kind, excuse me, not of what kind, but what is it, the thing itself. The third attribute that we covered was infinity. We confess that God is infinite in being and perfection, and we're going to see that three through nine, the rest of the attributes that we have covered, they're all negations. They are denials, because we know God more, not exclusively, but we know God more through what he is not than what he is. One of the ways to know God is through what he is not, and so infinity is a negation, Of what? Infinity is God without limitation, God without finity or finitude. Why is God infinite? Because since his being is in and of himself, there's nothing to limit him. a limit would have to be placed upon him by something outside of him. If there is nothing other than God to account for God, then nothing can limit him. There's nothing to limit his being, nothing to limit his perfection, because his being is in and of himself. Whereas creatures are finite. Our existence is from him and through him and to him, and God has bounded and set the limitations of what kind of beings we are as men and angels and animals or inanimate things. and so on and so forth. God is infinite in being and therefore infinite in perfection. There's no beginning or end to the perfection of God or to his being. I am that I am, God without limitation. The next thing that we confess in our chapter two, paragraph one of our confession is whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself. So this is where we spoke of incomprehensibility. Let me take five minutes to write that. And ineffability. incomprehensibility and ineffability, whose essence, whose being, what God is, cannot be comprehended by any but himself. Why? Because the finite man, creatures, cannot contain or comprehend the infinite, the infinite. Because our minds are lesser than God, because we have created finite being, we cannot comprehend the uncreated, the asse, infinite one who is our creator, who is our God. God is incomprehensible to us. But remember, we made a very important distinction between comprehending something and apprehending something. To state that God is incomprehensible is simply to state that we cannot have a full and complete understanding of who God is because he's greater than us. But we can apprehend God. It doesn't mean that we can't have a true and real knowledge of God. We may not be able to, the constant illustration is we can't wrap our arms around a tree perhaps, but you can touch the tree and know it. So the statement that God is incomprehensible is not saying God is not knowable in any way, shape, or form. It's simply recognizing that our minds cannot fully encapsulate God in our thoughts. And if we cannot fully encapsulate God in our thoughts, if we cannot comprehend his essence, then neither can we speak it. His essence is ineffable. You cannot fully express the infinite grandeur and majesty of God's being, because if your mind cannot comprehend it, how could your mouth speak it? We then had a lengthy discussion about the knowledge of God and accommodated language and analogical language and knowledge with regard to knowing God through causation, negation, and eminence. and knowing God through his divine names. If we can't comprehend God, what can we know about him? We can reason from causality that he is the uncaused causer of all things. We see in the world chains of events and causation. There must be an uncaused cause that accounts for all the things that have been caused. And that is God. So we know he is the ase mover, the ase creator of all things. Negation, how do we know God? I said we know him by what he is not. We consider all of the imperfections or the defects in creatures, all the limitations and finitude in creatures, and we deny them to be in God, such as finitude. We say God is infinite, that's a negation, and we'll talk about more negations. eminence. We know God when we look at virtues and good things in creatures and in creation. And we say these good things are a reflection of the original good, which is God. So these virtues that are in men or in angels, these virtues that we see in creation, are eminently, essentially, originally, infinitely, immutably in God. And then we look at the scriptures, and we consider the names of God. And we looked at 10 names of God. I am that I am, Yahweh, Yah, El, Eloah, Elohim, Adonai, Shaddai, Lord of hosts, and the Most High. That was 10 names, and we said, what can we learn from these names? They reinforce the other attributes, and they tell us not only of a God, but the God. We're not worshiping an abstract idea of a God, but rather we are worshiping Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in this way, we understand that though we confess and acknowledge that God is incomprehensible and ineffable, he's given us a true knowledge of him. He's given us a true knowledge of him as creator, of what he is not, and therefore what he is, of what he is eminently, and his names, revealing unto us his power and his majesty, his glory, his love, his wisdom, and so much more. So though God is incomprehensible and therefore ineffable, it doesn't mean that we know nothing or that we can say nothing. There's a great deal that we can know, and a great deal that we can say, but however far we go in the knowledge of God, we've just taken the ocean and filled a thimble with water, and that's our knowledge. And that's enough for the creature. That's enough for us. It's not a diminishing or a demeaning of our intelligence. God has made us this way. It's actually just an exaltation and magnification of God's infinity and his grandeur. So the incomprehensibility and ineffability of God is not a bad thing for God or a bad thing for us. It's just acknowledging the infinite distance between creator and creature, he who is ase and we who are exist we who are from him and through him and to him. So we don't say, bummer, God's incomprehensible and ineffable. It would be a bummer if he were comprehensible and speakable because then he would be lesser than us. So this is a good thing. And we glorify him and praise him for that. As we continued in our confession of faith, we come to these phrases that God is a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions. And so the next thing, number five, that we considered is God's divine simplicity. Simplicity, divine simplicity, is another negation. We're denying something about God in order to better understand what God is. And simplicity is God without parts. We confess that God is without parts, and in so doing, we confess God's simplicity. Simple in contrast to composite. A composite, componere, to put together, is made up of more fundamental parts. Something simple has no parts, it's just purely what it is. And the being of God is not a being that is composed of anything. We talked about different kinds of composition. We'd said none of those compositions describe the being of God. The simplicity of God is an affirmation of the purity, the non-compositeness of his being. A most pure spirit, that's what our confession says, without parts. And we derive this, especially from the scriptures where God says, I am that I am. I am that I am. There is nothing that makes up God. He simply is that he is. And so divine auseity and divine simplicity go hand in hand. The one whose being is in and of himself has pure and perfect being that's not made up of parts. And we said that if God were made up of parts, if there were any composition in God, it would destroy the doctrine of God because Anything that has been composed has a composer. Anytime there's a union of parts, there is a cause that establishes or explains why those parts are united. If you have two things together, if you see a Lego set that's been built, you say, someone must have built this. If the Lego pieces are put together, something has composed that Lego set. And so composition requires causation. Simplicity is saying God's not caused, there's nothing that has composed him. Composition also requires a succession of moments. There were parts, and then there was a union of the parts. That's time, that's succession, but God's eternal. And so therefore, God must be simple. He must not be composite. If we reject simplicity and affirm a composition in God, we're destroying auseity, we're destroying infinity, we're destroying eternity, we're destroying immutability, and more. So divine simplicity is, on the one hand, a negation of composition, and on the other hand, an affirmation of pure actuality or pure being. I won't go into pure actuality now because we're just reviewing. That's its own subject that requires careful explanation. I messed up my numbering here. Number four should be numbers four and five. Sorry to the note takers. And let's flip this around. You remember how to do this. Number seven. was divine invisibility. We confess that God is invisible, that he's without body, he's invisible. There's no physical form to which God is limited. We're not talking about the incarnation here, we're talking about the divine being, that you can't, The human eye, the physical eye cannot perceive what God is. Divine invisibility, whom no man hath seen nor can see. And we spent much more time on number eight and nine, which was immutability. And then impassibility. And we'll just, we'll do those together, eight and nine. Notice these are again more negations. Invisible, God is not limited to a visible form or a human body. Immutable, God is without mutation. Impassible, God is not subject to passions. So immutability, God without mutation. God says, I, the Lord, change not in Malachi 3. In James, we read of God in whom there's no variation or shadow due to change. In Numbers and 1 Samuel, the Lord says, I am not man that I should lie or change my mind or repent such language. God without mutation. God does not change. and God cannot change or be changed. God without mutation. In order for something to be mutated or changed, I guess now we have to talk about pure actuality. Created beings have passive potency. Passive potency. Our being is capable, potential, of being acted upon, passive, in order to be changed. My being has passive potency. It has the capacity to be acted upon, which would then change me. So something with passive potency is mutable. But God is pure actuality. When you change something, you actualize it. You bring it to actuality. Something with passive potency, the capacity to be acted upon and thus changed, mutable, something has actualized, has caused your being to be in a new way and brought you to a new actuality because you're capable of that. You're susceptible to mutation because your being has passive potency. In God, who is simple, we say that he has no passive potency. God has no passive potency. Rather, he is pure actuality. He is that he is. And all that he is. All that is in God is God. Whatever is in God is God. God is simple, not made up of parts. He is pure actuality. And if God is pure actuality without any passive potency, then his being is not susceptible to the power or influence of another that could possibly change him, nor can he somehow change himself. And we need to park briefly here because Among Calvinists, Reformed Baptists, Calvinist Baptists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, in the Reformed and Reformed-ish world, an idea has lodged in the brain of many people over the past decades where, here's what happens. People come to the Reformed faith and they fall in love with God's sovereignty, rightly so. We praise God for his sovereignty. But sovereignty becomes this, like, arch attribute for God, to which all other things flow in some way. And God is, in their minds, first sovereign, and then other things. And he is sovereign, but there's no first, second, third. Because, in their mind, God is first sovereign, they think, well, God is immutable with regard to other people changing him, but he can sovereignly change himself. So God can change and does change, but he's sovereign, so nothing changes him, he just changes himself. That's not the Christian doctrine of divine immutability, and that's not a safe doctrine of God, because it's saying that God does have passive potency, he does have the potential to be other than he is, he just has control over what that's going to be. So you have a mutable God, he's just sovereignly mutable. And they think that the sovereignty protects that mutability. And since God's sovereignly mutable, we'll call that immutable. But so long as you are subject to mutation, you can't say that you're immutable. If you have passive potency, the capacity to be acted upon and changed, then you are not purely actual. You are not all that you are. You're all that you are right now, but you could be something more. If you join the army, then you'll be all that you can be. Thank you for laughing at my joke. But you see the problem there, there's a good intent. There's a good intent to affirm, nothing changes God. But they've fallen into a ditch in thinking that God changes himself. God does not change himself. Even the incarnation's not a change, that's its own subject. It's not a change in God. And so God has no passive potency. He is pure actuality or purely actual. He is already and always has been and always will be eternity, no succession. He is that he is, I am that I am. This moves to impassibility because passions are motions. They're movements. Passions are motions. A passion is when something moves you. Why are we moved by objects or people or things outside of us? We're moved when we perceive in them good or bad. You perceive good in something, you are moved towards it. You perceive bad in something, you're moved away from it. These motions of movement towards good and away from bad, those are passions. Now notice the same root here in passion with passive potency, the potential to be acted upon, to be passive by another thing. A passion is when something has acted upon you and moved you toward the good or moved you away from the bad. And so we often call these passions emotions or affections because We talked about how all kinds of things can change you. I love that commercial, that phrase, the Snickers one. You're not you when you're hungry. You change into a different person when you're hangry. You're grumpy and annoyed and ornery because you want to eat some food. And then you eat the Snickers bar and suddenly, ah, you've been restored to the calm and nice and kind person that you were supposed to be. We get changed all the time by things outside of us. So we are passable. We are passable, we are able to be moved towards new states of being. I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm peaceful, I'm courageous, I'm afraid. All of the human emotions that we feel, our passions or emotions, are the result of something outside of us operating on us. Because we are the patients of Agents. Again, same root. A patient, pati, is one who suffers or experiences or undergoes the actions of an agent, a doer. A doer, an agent, and a patient, one done unto, patients have passions, and agents are activating or actualizing, moving our passions, moving us all the time. People are agents. All created things are agents against us. If the sky is clear after rain and I see the mountains and they make me happy to see the sight of natural beauty, that natural beauty has moved me. It's just a mountain far away, but it's moved me to praise God and to enjoy the beauty of it. And then if someone, if Campbell says to me, I made biltong, I say, oh, yes, Campbell has moved me to happiness. His biltong, that's a South African jerky, has moved me to happiness. Anything and everything can move us in and out of happiness. If Campbell says, oh, no, the biltong's gone, now I'm moved into anger and rage. Remember the fellowship meal that we had where it was breakfast? You think, oh, breakfast for lunch. That's great. Your heart is moved towards joy. And then you get to the line and you think, how long have these scrambled eggs been sitting here? They're green. and suddenly you're moved away from joy, and you're repulsed by what you perceive as bad. You get the idea. Passions or emotions relative to good or bad that we perceive, as we are the patients of agents, which is all to say, is God ever the patient of an agent? First of all, God has no passive potency, so if you try to be an agent on God, you're not going to accomplish anything. But God has no passions. God without passions. His love and his mercy are not things that he's moved into and can be moved out of. They are his very being. The scriptures do not say God is loving, but God is love. And so his love is not a part of what he is. His love is not a state of being into which he has been moved. His love is his very being. It is his goodness that pours out goodness on his creatures. That is his love. And so God can no more cease to be loving than he can cease to be. So when we deny passions in God, it's not making God this inert rock of nothingness, but rather it's exalting that what is in God a perfection of love is in us a passion of love. And we're moved in and out of love, but God is love all the time. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, Lamentations tells us, therefore I have hope. But this I recall to mind, and therefore I have hope, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Great is thy faithfulness. New are your mercies every morning. Why is it? Is it because God is just perpetually in a good mood? No, God has no moods. God is love, he is mercy, he is compassion. So these are the things that we have reviewed, or of course we've reviewed, but in review, these are the things that we taught in our lessons in more detail and with all kinds of quotations to support them, more biblical arguments in each of them, but I wanted to get us up to speed because the attributes build on one another and presuppose one another, and as we proceed, we need to keep in mind these foundational doctrines of the greatness and the glory and the majesty of our Lord. So I hope that in a brief period of time, this revives your memories and maybe helps you to refresh and to strengthen some of your understanding of these attributes, remembering also that when we say attributes in plural, It means many things that we attribute to God, but because God is simple, it is all one perfect, pure, perfect being. It's not this attribute is this part of God, and that attribute is that part of God. The attributes are plural in our minds, as we attribute many different things according to how the scriptures speak of God, but they all speak of the one perfect, pure God. So don't deduce from the plurality of attributes a plurality or partiality in God. Rather, all these things are many different human ways of knowing and loving and praising God's simple, perfect, pure, immutable being. Praise be God, I am that I am. So thank you for your attention, and Lord willing, next Sunday we'll start moving forward again in our study of our confession.