by the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 28. in verse 20, where He said that we are to baptize in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Let's go ahead and pray before we start. Father, thank You for this time and this crucial doctrine that we are looking at this morning. I pray that You would give us alert minds, give us critical thinking this morning, Lord. Some of the things we'll talk about will stretch our cerebral capacity. And this is nothing new when we talk about doctrines related to you. So we pray that the Spirit of God would be our teacher this morning and that Christ would be glorified through what we talk about. And we pray in His name. Amen. Within the Christian faith, there's a wide latitude concerning what Christians can believe and disagree on. For example, to remain within the bounds of true Christianity, one can have differing views on divorce and remarriage, sanctification, miracles in tongues, church government, many other doctrinal issues we can disagree on. But when it comes to the Trinity, There's no room for disagreement. To remain orthodox, you must believe in a triune God. That's non-negotiable. It's one thing to be unclear as to what the term Trinity means. Many Christians today, because of a lack of clear biblical teaching, are unclear in their understanding of the triunity of God. But it's quite another thing to understand the doctrine or the basic concepts of the doctrine and then deny it as many cults do, such as the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, United Pentecostals, Christian science, theosophy, and liberal denominations. Organizations such as these are definitely out of the realm of orthodoxy. and are clearly not Christian and have no saving relationship with the person of Jesus Christ as they deny all aspects of the Holy Trinity. So the dividing line between what is truly Christian and what is not is belief in the Trinity or tri-unity of God. And again, this is not based on church tradition. but on Jesus and the apostles themselves and even records in the prophets of the Old Testament. Now, as many of you know, the word Trinity is not in the Bible. And this has fostered a lot of criticism over the centuries. Those opposed to the Trinity remind us that since the word Trinity is not in the Bible, it can't be a true biblical doctrine. But in response to this criticism, just because the term is not in the Bible doesn't make it false. There are a number of theological terms that are not in the Bible which are nevertheless true. For example, the term virgin birth is not in the Bible. Yet to deny the virgin birth puts you out of the realm of orthodoxy. You can't deny the virgin birth and be a Christian. The terms incarnation and hypostatic union are not in the Bible. And it's one thing if you don't understand those doctrines, but it's another thing to understand them and deny them. And if you deny them, it again puts you outside the bounds of salvation. If you deny that Jesus was virgin-born, as the doctrine of the virgin birth teaches, or if you deny that He is God, who has become man, or if you deny that He is both 100% God and 100% man, two distinct, unmixed natures in one person, as the doctrines of the incarnation and hypostatic union teach, you cannot be saved. So just because the term Trinity is not in the Bible doesn't make it untrue. That is a completely fallacious argument. And anyone you come across that tells you that, you can argue, just as I have, with other theological terms. And there are many that are not in Scripture. And yet, to deny those things puts you outside of the realm of orthodoxy. But in the early church, within the first four or five centuries, the church produced many confessions and creeds which many in the church today see as antiquated or irrelevant to at least present-day Christianity. And this is sad on a number of accounts. I want to give you some things here. And as I alluded to in my prayer, some of this is going to take some thinking, especially as we get into a definition of the Trinity. I've gone about as deep as I can go into that subject, and I've tried to take out the real technical terms but yet keep the full concept at least as much as I can. So please, especially this morning, try and follow along with me. But it's sad, number one, to ignore or reject the early creeds and confessions because it only proves one's indifference to history. The early church literally spilt its blood in defending the correct and accurate and crucial doctrines of Christianity. None of which is more important than the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrines we have today came at a great cost. Cost to brothers and sisters in the first few hundred years of the church. So these doctrines are not purely academic. To the early church, they were matters of life and death, both physical and eternal. To defend the doctrines of the faith that many in the church today are indifferent to literally cost Christians in those early centuries their very lives. But what is more tragic is that to deny the central doctrines the church gave us literally cost people their souls. So to ignore what the church gave us only proves one's indifference to lives lost at great cost, both now and then. But number two, to ignore or reject the early creeds and confessions only displays one's arrogance. Anyone who ignores or rejects the early creeds and confessions as irrelevant only shows their arrogance in thinking they know more than the early church fathers and pastors who painstakingly slaved over the New Testament to give us precise, cogent, and clear boundaries for the Christian faith that we have today. They dedicated their very lives to the cause of accuracy in biblical doctrine so there would be no ambiguity as to what beliefs constituted an essential doctrine of the faith necessary for eternal life. And if some come along today and offhandedly dismiss what the early church gave its descendants, it only shows how arrogant they really are. Not to mention their ignorance of what is essential to Christianity and what is not. But number three, to ignore or reject the early creeds and confessions only begs history to repeat itself. And much of the church has done exactly this today. The multitude of evangelical churches that embrace many of the cults or liberal denominations today is staggering. More and more churches are joining hands with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and liberals and Roman Catholics and accepting them as Christian. When these are cults and churches that deny the essentials of the Christian faith, putting them outside the limits of true salvation through Christ. And much of this is due to the fact that much of the evangelical church today is completely unfamiliar with early church history, which carefully marked out the critical doctrines of the Christian faith necessary for salvation. So my argument to you this morning is first that you heed what church history has taught us and given us to preserve a pure Christianity that truly saves. And it has done this through many creeds and confessions which are succinct statements and expression of biblical doctrine necessary for the saving of the soul. But also pay attention to the early church creeds and confessions because in them is expressed what constitutes error. And this is what is missing today in so many church doctrinal statements. If a church has a statement at all and more and more evangelical churches don't even have doctrinal statements. You can look on the websites, every tab, and you will not find a doctrinal statement on many of the church's websites today. It's not only important to state what you believe, it's also important to state what you do not believe. To state what you believe is good, but to state what you don't believe is better, much better. So if you say you believe in the Trinity, that's good. But to state what the Trinity is not is better because it makes your belief more clear. For example, the Athanasian Creed, which we'll look at more closely probably next week, says that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. This is what we believe. But it then goes on to say what we do not believe, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. Now this is crucial because only saying that you believe in the Trinity does not reflect your belief in three persons who are a unity. But it does not preclude a belief in three different substances in those persons, which is actually heresy. So if you make the positive statement, you can still be guilty of error because you left something out. This is commitment to both affirming, or this commitment to both affirming and denying what you believe is most recently reflected in the Nashville Statement, which is only about a week old. It's a statement on biblical sexuality just released last Tuesday. And in this statement there are 14 articles reflecting the biblical position on marriage and gender distinctions. And within each of those 14 articles there is stated what is affirmed and what is denied on these issues. Making the statement crystal clear. This is what we believe about marriage and biblical sexuality and this is what we do not believe about it. Very, very important. Now just as a side note, The historical church has said that in order to remain faithful to the New Testament, in order to be saved, one has to affirm at least six essential doctrines centered around the person and work of Christ. I want to give those to you. Number one, the doctrine of the Trinity. Three persons who are God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Number two, the doctrine of the Incarnation. God became man, uniting but not mixing 100% deity with 100% humanity. Number three, the doctrine of Christ's impeccability. That is, Christ never sinned sinless. Number four, the doctrine of Christ's substitution. Christ died in the place of sinners, taking their sin upon Himself and satisfying His Father's wrath against it. Number five, the doctrine of Christ's resurrection. Christ rose physically in a glorified body three days after He was crucified. And then number six, the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. Salvation is purely by God's grace expressed through faith in Christ by the sinner, completely apart from any merit on the sinner's part. Those have been the six essential doctrines necessary for salvation throughout church history. And of course, those are quickly diminishing in the church today. But of all of these six doctrines that a person has to believe to be saved, the doctrine of the Trinity is first. Because it encompasses all that God is as the God of our great salvation. So as we begin this morning, I want us to look at first the definition of the Trinity. A definition of the Trinity. And this will take us a few minutes to get through. A simple definition I've already given you. Three persons who are God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But it's much more complex than that because we haven't identified the persons. So as we get started here I want us to get a clear definition of the term Trinity as well as what the term does not mean. In the Bible's teaching the Trinity is neither polytheistic meaning many gods, nor tritheistic, meaning three gods. It's neither one of those. This is what makes Christianity unique. It asserts that there is one God. So Christianity is truly monotheistic. We believe in one God. But it also asserts that there are three persons. no more and no less, who are individually 100% God. So in Christianity we say that there is one God existing or subsisting in three persons. Now I'm going to give you some technical theological terms because that's what makes it clear and concise So the three persons subsist in one God. Subsist and exist are virtually identical. But these are not three persons subsisting in three different substances. The plurality of persons does not contradict the oneness of the divine essence or substance. We do not have one God existing or subsisting in three persons who are three different substances. That is not what we have. We have one God subsisting in three persons, all who are 100% God individually, yet who possess the same substance. Three subsistences, one substance. Very important. The early church fought for that for almost 500 years. Just on that very issue. A being can be singular in one sense and plural in another. countless examples of that in our own lives. Men can be singular as being men and yet be plural as being material and immaterial, right? So if singularity and plurality are true in human existence, why should they be precluded in divine existence? In the human realm, there's a two-fold subsistence in one human substance. material and immaterial. And in the divine realm there is a threefold subsistence in one divine substance, one God, three persons. So in our definition of triunity, although we affirm three subsistences, that is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we need to guard against the error of three substances. We cannot say that God is three persons like Peter, James and John. We can't say that. They are all one in human nature but are three distinct substances. Adopting this analogy to the Trinity would make us tritheists, not Trinitarians. Three gods. Which, by the way, the church has been accused of ever since the doctrine was stated by the apostles. God is plural in His subsistence, but not in His substance. He is one in substance and three in subsistence. Or to put it another way, He's one in essence and three in persons. Each person of the Trinity has the same essence. But not only do we need to guard against the error of three subsistences in the Trinity or three gods, we also need to guard ourselves from the error of one subsistence or one person. We don't want to say that we believe in one God who is one person. That's also a heresy. The early church fought against this vehemently. There were many Christian heresies adhering to God being one person. Heresies like Monarchianism and Sabellianism and Adoptionism and Modalism, they all believed, these are early church heresies of the first four centuries, they all believed that there was one God and one person. And they were anathematized by the councils. It was heresy. Just affirming that you are monotheistic is not enough. Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, and Unitarians are all monotheistic. They all believe in one God. But they also believe that the one God is one person. They deny the Trinity. So their God is not only one substance, He's also one subsistence. The God of the Bible, however, is not one person but three. He's one substance but He is not one subsistence. As we've said, He's one in substance or essence but three in persons or subsistences. So we are, in fact, monotheistic, believing in one God, but we are also triune, meaning we believe in three persons. So again, we believe in one God existing or subsisting in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But beyond this, and this is where we're gonna start getting a little technical. That was the kindergarten portion of our presentation. So beyond this partial understanding of the Trinity, we also believe that each of these three persons is co-equal in all the divine attributes, each person distinct, unmixed with the other persons, and that all such attributes cannot be less than 100% in each person, nor can they be communicated to the other persons. And concerning the divine substance, each person equally has the same divine substance or essence in common with the other persons, each person possessing 100%. of the divine substance. You said you add that up and that's 300%. I don't know. All I'm telling you is that's what we have to believe to stay orthodox. You have 100% plus 100% plus 100% equals 100% in God's math. And that 100% substance in each person is non-diluted, it is not compounded, nor can it be divided. Further, let me know when you need a break. concerning the internal Trinitarian relationship of the three persons. The second person is from the first person. And the third person is from the first and second persons. Now I'll elaborate on that. This is a Trinitarian, not an Incarnational relationship as is commonly described by the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are terms within the Trinity. They have nothing to do with God becoming man. Jesus did not become a Son when He was born by the Virgin Mary. He has been a Son eternally to His Eternal Father. This is an inner Trinitarian relationship. And this is confusing to Christians or not understood. Many Christians believe that Jesus became a son. They believe he was always God in eternity past. That's not the issue. He was the eternal second person, but he became a son when he was incepted by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. That's not true. Church has declared that heresy. He's always been a son because the Father's always been a father. And, of course, the Holy Spirit has always been the Holy Spirit. In other words, the second person of the Trinity is not the Son because of His physical birth as a human being. He's the Son because He is eternally of and from His eternal Father within the Trinity. The Father then is the source of the divine substance of the Son and Spirit. This source of the divine substance is referred to as the generation of the Son and the procession or spiration of the Holy Spirit. I think I lost some of you here. By the way, there's biblical evidence for this, so I'm getting to it. I'm just trying to explain the concept before I give it to you. Since the Son is generated or begotten, is that a familiar term to you? He's begotten of the Father? From the Father according to John 1.14 and John 1.18 where John says that He is the only begotten of the Father. and the only begotten Son, biblical terms. If the Son then is begotten from the Father, and you need to get this, He cannot be begotten in the sense of human generation or human conception of begetting, because we are in time. We're begotten too. But we're begotten in time. A point in time. Which means, from God's standpoint, the Son was not begotten in time. Which means what? He has to be eternally begotten. He has to eternally generate from the Father. there is no point in time in eternity. This was heresy in the early church. This was 400 years of controversy and this was Arius' heresy that there was a time when the Son was not. As soon as you say that there was a point in eternity when the Son was begotten, you have crossed into heresy. So if He wasn't begotten in a point in eternity, that only leaves you one alternative. He has to be, present tense, eternally begotten. eternally begotten by His Father. He's the only begotten Son. In a similar way, the Spirit proceeds or is spirated from both the Father and the Son. And this we find in John 14.16 and 26 and John 16.7 where Jesus says the Father will send the Holy Spirit in My name and Jesus Himself will send the Holy Spirit. And like the eternal generation or the eternal begetting of the Son, this sending or procession or spiration of the Spirit must be an eternal one, since the Spirit is eternal with the Father and the Son. And I know for some of you this is new and very difficult to process. Trust me, I know. But this is the only way we can understand the eternal relationship within the Trinity, which really should cause us to be awestruck, to even consider something we can't understand. And I've told you many times before this, you already know it, God is not like us. Remotely, He's not like us at all. As God, it's very difficult to understand just the concept of God, but then you add that to the concept of the Trinity, we can't understand it. All we can do is state it, which is what I'm trying to do here. And even though it may be new to some of you, it is not new to the church. The church was born with these concepts that they had to battle for because of heresies. And what amazes me today is people in the church don't even care about it anymore. And as I said before, the early church literally spilt its blood for this doctrine. So as not to confuse who God is and what the relationship of the three persons are in the Trinity. This teaching was formulated in the early centuries by the church, not as a theological abstraction, but to combat a multitude of heresies that denied the triunity of God and the biblical relationships among the three persons in the Trinity. I mean this and the deity of Christ, these two issues, the Trinity and the deity of Christ were the two foremost battlegrounds for the first 450 years of the church. It's best seen in the Athanasian Creed of the 5th century and this was done when the dust settled. the Athanasian Creed. Now Athanasius probably did not write this but it came from his understanding of the Trinity. It surfaced about 75 to 100 years after he died and this is what it says. And I'm just condensing a few parts here. It's actually quite long. And this is what the church believed. Whosoever will be saved That's pretty clear. Before all things, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic or universal faith. We're not talking about Roman Catholic faith. Catholic simply means universal. The universal belief of the church is what it's talking about. Which faith, except every one, do keep whole and undefiled? Without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." That's quite a preamble. You either believe this or you perish in hell. And the Catholic faith is this. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding." Now the Athanasian Creed said it a whole lot more succinctly than I did, but I was trying to explain a little bit. So the early church concluded that the Father is unbegotten, ungenerated, unspirated by neither the Son nor the Spirit. Rather, He eternally generates and eternally begets the Son, and He and the Son eternally spirate the Spirit. The Son then is generated and begotten by the Father and is unspirated by the Father or the Spirit. But He is with the Father, who together eternally spirate the Spirit. The Spirit then is ungenerated and unbegotten of the Father or the Son. Neither is He the source of generation or begetting of the Son. He is, however, eternally spirated by both the Father and the Son." It's very, very, very precise language And these concepts are obviously beyond human comprehension. Our minds are dwarfed by this type of theological discussion of the Godhead. I'm telling you, they don't even discuss this stuff in seminary anymore. We talked about it in seminary over 35 years ago, but you're not going to find this in seminaries today. It's not there. It's an abandonment of church history. This is the best that our human observation and reasoning can do with the scriptures. And I think they did an unbelievable job. I mean, if we were starting from scratch here today, I'm not sure we have the minds, the theological minds, to dissect this and understand it and put it together in a statement. One theologian said this about contemplating the Trinity. He that denies the doctrine of the Trinity may lose his soul, so he that too much strives to understand it may lose his wits. I think he's right. But when we consider a working definition of the Trinity or triunity, any definition we formulate must include at least three features. Number one, it must include the oneness of God. This means God's uniqueness. Some theologies use His onlyness. in that there is no being like Him that He is one indivisible substance. Number two, we have to consider the threeness of God. This means that He's three eternal persons or distinctions or subsistences or modes of being in one God. And then number three, the deity of persons. This means that each person possesses equal, full, 100% deity, undiluted, unmixed, and not communicated among the three persons. Those three things are essential for any definition of the Trinity. So I'm gonna give you a simple definition based on what we've talked about, and it's this. In the nature or substance of the one true God, there subsists three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are in each person 100% God." That's about as bare a definition, with any precision, that we can come up with. I mean, an obviously bare bones definition is we believe that God is one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So that takes care of the definition. Secondly, let's look at the attributes related to the Trinity. Remember I told you at the beginning, the term Trinity is not an attribute of God. But there are a couple of attributes that directly relate to His triunity. Last week, remember, I gave you both the incommunicable and the communicable attributes of God. The incommunicable, again, are those that relate to Him exclusively. No other being in the universe has these. They are completely unique to God. They are divine by nature. And then the communicable divine attributes are those attributes that God communicates to created beings and are common to both Him and them. They differ only in degree. The communicable attributes of God are infinite in Him and in angels and men, they are finite. That would be the difference. And again, for your reference, you can see those up on the screen. The incommunicable divine attributes which are exclusive to God would be self-existence, simplicity, infinity, eternality, immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. None of these attributes, any other being in the universe does not possess. These are purely for God. And then the communicable divine attributes, which he shares with angels and men, would be wisdom, goodness, loving-kindness, holiness, righteousness, justice, and truth. But the two attributes, and I left one out, actually, in the incommunicable last week, which got carried over this week. Attributes that relate directly to the doctrine of the Trinity are what we want to talk about now, and they are number one, unity. So you can write in, if you're taking notes on the incommunicable, add unity there. The unity of God refers to His singleness as God. This is why we do not believe in three gods. It's because God possesses the attribute of unity. So, in effect, the unity of God refers to the unity of His substance. If He was three substances, He would not be a unity. Just like Peter and James and John would not be a unity of one substance. But since He is one substance, even though He subsists in three persons, He's a unity. And nowhere can it be more clear than in the Shema, in Deuteronomy 6.4 which says, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is related to the unity of God. Now, the unity of God also refers to His uniqueness, not just His singleness. That is, He is the one and only God. There are none like Him. I can't say that I'm unique because there's other human beings. There are no other gods. God is, that's it. And of course, we hear this in Scripture over and over again, right? When Solomon prayed in 1 Kings 8.60, he wanted that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God, there is no other. You can have your gods over there, but they're not gods. There's only one true God. There is no other. God said in Deuteronomy 32.39, now see that I, even I am He, and there is no God besides Me. He said again in Isaiah 44, 6, "...Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and His Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last. Besides Me there is no God." God is unique. Moving to the New Testament, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 8, 4, "...there is no other God but One." just restating what Old Testament Scripture had already stated. So that's the unity of God, His singleness and His uniqueness. But then we have number two, the simplicity of God. And that is on your list. And this refers to God's uncompounded, non-complex, indivisible, substance. We mean by uncompounded, you know, when you have a compound, it's two or more substances put together, in some cases compressed. We talk about a composition roof. We're talking about asphalt and stones and tar and it's compressed together in a shingle. It's a composite, okay? We talk about drug compounds. We have several drugs put together in one capsule. God is uncompounded. Unlike God, angels and men are non-simple or complex beings, being composed both of soul and body. Men with souls and material bodies, angels with souls and spiritual bodies. Angels' spiritual bodies are not like God. I think some people think that God and angels have the same type of makeup. No. They're created and they're complex. He's uncreated and simple. Uncomplex. He's simple in that He does not possess a soul and body, either material or spiritual. He is pure spirit. God is spirit, Jesus said in John 4, and must be worshipped in spirit and truth. Angels are not pure spirits. They have spiritual bodies. God does not have a spiritual body. The simplicity of God is also the reason why we are not tritheists or those who believe in three gods, because God is a single substance, as I've already said, even though He subsists in the three persons. And He is simplicity because His one substance is not divided among the three persons. So we believe in one God, one substance, and three persons, or three subsistences. And we can never say that God is three substances or three essences, but that He is simple, being one substance or one essence. I'm out of time. We've got more? We'll pick it up next week. If you have questions, let me know. Next week we're going to go through a little bit more of the history of this, show you how this unfolded, but I want to conclude by biblical data. by which the early church formulated their doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine in the Bible is not hidden in a corner. It's all over Old Testament and New Testament. And we're going to look at that next week. Father, thank you for this time. And I know these concepts are difficult, Laura, especially if this is the first time a person has experienced this type of information. So I pray, God, that it would only heighten their awe of your great majesty. Again, confirming that you are not remotely like us. And because of who you are, you are able to do all things. You are able to save. Your arm is not short that it cannot save. You can do whatever you want. You sit in the heavens. And for those of us who are in Christ, who are your children, we have absolutely nothing to fear, both now and forever, because you are God and we are wrapped up in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God. and we are sealed by the Holy Spirit who is God. And we thank you, Father, for this incomprehensible teaching. And we pray that we can pick it up again next week and we'd have more of an understanding of it so that we might praise you more. And we just thank you for it in Jesus' name, amen.