Latest / Woodlands Church Academy's Podcast / Sunday Bible School- John 1 and the Trinity- Jack Johnson -June21

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Sunday Bible School- John 1 and the Trinity- Jack Johnson -June21 · Woodlands Church Academy's Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're thinking about the prologue of John as a jumping off point for Christology and Trinity.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, who is Jesus?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who is the Holy Spirit?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who is God?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: That as a set of broad questions.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to think about why that sort of those sorts of theological ideas develop and then why.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that means I'm attempting to cover far too much ground in the next hour.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I, of course, won't be able to do all of that.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to be skipping some quite important developments.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if things don't make sense, ask.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully there'll be time for questions at the end.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there will be questions and things that I have for you throughout.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a start point, I'm going to ask you some questions to discuss in little groups.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they are, have you thought about the Trinity before?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why are there three and not two or four or five?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we use the words we use, such as Trinity?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also if you've ever thought about the what we will come to, the technical words, hypostasis, usea.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't know them, don't worry, we'll talk about them.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Where in the Bible do these themes come up?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you were to say, if I was to say, find me the Trinity in the Bible, apart from John 1, where would you point to?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have any other questions about the Trinity, talk about those as well.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll ask for some feedback in like two minutes.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's loads of questions, just pick one and go for it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean for like who God is?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: If God is unchanging, what does it mean for like the person of Jesus to have a beginning?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: That would seem to be a problem.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is a can of worms, and it's a really fun can of worms.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm gonna read from the Product of John.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so if you want to follow on, please do.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is just John 1.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word, and the word was uh the word was God.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I've got this on the screen.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um He was with God in the beginning, through Him all things were made.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Without Him nothing was made that has been made.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness is not overcoming.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him all might believe.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: The true light that gives life light to everyone was coming into the world.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: He came to that which was his own, but the but his own did not receive him.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yet to all who did receive him, uh sorry, you can't do two things at once.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh to all who did receive him, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent or or of uh human decision or husband's will, but born of God.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, the who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: John testified concerning him, he cried out, saying, This is the one I spoke about when I said, He is the one who has surpassed me, because he was before me.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Out of his fullness we have received grace in in place of grace already given.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship to the Father.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: He has made himself known.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of my all-time favourite passages in the Bible.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's really beautiful and poetic, and that's amazing given that it's not written in English in the first place.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that that is often conveyed, I really like.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's also really, really complex.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it John weaves together a series of ideas and themes, and two of those two of the two of those themes are creation and this idea of the logos or the word.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and these two themes sort of interrelate, and they are not themes that are new into the sort of world that John is speaking.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he's speaking into a context where people understand some of these ideas.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um depending on who you talk, talk to, there are some of these ideas are probably very present in like the philosophical worldview.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um, because he's because he's speaking in Greek, that idea of the logos or the word, that that isn't just this idea of Jesus.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Before that, we have this theme that goes through Plato and Socrates and the Stoics.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: They all have this idea of a theme of the logos, and it means different things to those different groups.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it takes on different forms and different philosophical circles, but it is an idea that is like present in the philosophical ideas of the world in which the first century is coming into, I guess.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to point us to one particularly interesting person today, which is Philo of Alexandria, who you may not have heard of.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um Philo of Alexandria is a Jewish philosopher who is a Platonic thinker, and he lives in about 20 BC to 50 AD.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the world of the New Testament, but is writing before the Gospel writers, and he's writing in Egypt.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and this is what he writes.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: He writes, the incorporeal world was already completed, having its seat in the divine reason, and there that word is for reason is word or logos, and the world perceptible by the external senses was made on the model of it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's from the creation chapter 10, and you can find that free online if you want to.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't have an exact date for this, but the consensus is before sometime before 40 AD.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So before the the writing of John's Gospel.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so just to pull on what Philo is doing in this passage, um, he is pulling on this idea of the word or the logos and connecting that to the creation, which is exactly what John then does in the first chapter of John.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he's referencing Psalm 33, verse 6.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, their starry host the breath, by their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this idea of the or the words of God, or the word of God that is rumbling along through sort of Hebrew theology, and there's this word that's happening in like Greek philosophy, and John basically takes these ideas and goes, Jesus.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's Jesus.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're just talking about Jesus.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is who he is.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: This how the statement of his gospel is to go, Jesus is this person who is God and yet is distinct from God.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus is who creates the universe.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's really fun, I think.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really fascinating.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you are an engaged thinker, whether that's Jewish or Greek, you have a sense of what this means, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's speaking to like two worldviews at the same time by combining these ideas, and that's fascinating.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the if we think about verse one of John's Gospel, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is the word who creates, it is the word that comes out of God's mouth that creates all things.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But this isn't the word Trinity, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: What we have is Jesus and the Father, related, distinct, in some sort of relationship.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't have the Holy Spirit at this point, really.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: At least not at this point in John.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we are still left with a series of questions, even if we are being pointed, I think, in a particular direction.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so thankfully, it's not just John.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we see in Matthew 3, verse 16-17, uh, and also Mark 1, 10 to 11.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the baptism of Jesus, and in Matthew it reads, As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water, and at that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the voice from heaven said, This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And here we have three distinct people, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have Jesus in the water and out, we have the spirit descending, we have the father speaking.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is like another one of those things on top of that John narrative, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where John says Jesus uh is like essentially one with the Father, and um the other gospels say, and we also have the Spirit happening.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have I mean the Bible is just fascinating in how it connects with itself often.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we have the G we have Jesus and the Spirit as distinct actors, and I think that's really important, right?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not just like it's God as father, and then it's God as spirit, and then it's God as son.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's all three of them are present and doing slightly different things in different ways, and that that will be important later.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we see similar themes like in Luke 2, where Jesus at the temple says he goes to his father's house, like as though he is somehow distinct.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we get these distinct people, and this is just the gospels.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we were to look at um the letters, particularly in Paul, we have um similar things in Romans 8, in 2 Corinthians 13 and 14, in Galatians 4, 4 to 6.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and these are all talking about either the Father and the Son, or the Father, the Son and the Spirit, or Jesus in the Spirit, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's relating them to each other.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these some of these Bible verses get called uh by people like Sarah Coakley as as proto-trinitarian, as though it's not the like Trinitarian formula that we have that gets established, and we're gonna come to it, but it is the reason why those people say this is the Trinity, why they use that language to explain what they see as happening throughout the New Testament.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not just in John 1, it's also in the other gospel accounts and it's in the letters, and it's just sort of across that breadth of scripture, which is really interesting.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's not named and it's not fleshed out, and that make gives us some problems.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh those problems really are what I have called the problem passages, and I appreciate that I'm talking about the Bible when I call these a problem.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for Trinity it is a bit of a problem.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um so in Colossians 1 15 we have the Son uh is the image of the invisible God, firstborn over all creation.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 8, 22-23, which is historically uh used as a prophetic idea about Jesus.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Lord brought me first forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be, when there were no watery depths, I was given birth.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: John 14, 28, you heard me say, I am going away, and I am coming back to you.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you love me, you would be glad that I'm going to my Father, for the Father is greater than I.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in Deuteronomy 6, 4, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: That final one is like the foundational like text for Judaism, the Shema, like the Lord your God is one.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: How can God be one and be three?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is basically the problem we have.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so have a chat.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: How can God be one and three?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about these Bible verses before?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think they relate to the other Bible verses that I very quickly skimmed through?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Does that all make sense?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Have a chat.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're this is it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like we this is the kind of worms that actually we will spend five centuries as a church trying to deal with, and some of these answers involve questions of hierarchy.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hierarchy is an early church heresy.
• 12:05
  unknown: But the I was given.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hold the thoughts, hold the thoughts, hold the thoughts, hold the thoughts.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: We can come back to the heresy at the end.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Any other thoughts?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was wondering about the translation of these verses and whether we're not encapsulating the whole meaning of some of the words and whether that will have an impact on how we read that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Which ones were you looking at?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes it will get better, sometimes it will get worse.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But in all cases, whether that's which language you're reading in, there's still a question of how of like what you understand the text to be saying, and that is not always made easier by going to an original language.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like all forms of translation are a form of interpretation, but all forms of reading are also in a form of interpretation.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So better and worse.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Depends what we're talking about.
• 12:58
  unknown: We figured that um Trinity is like cake.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Go on.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's still one big cake, but they're just three big slices, and it's always but at some point they're separate now, though, aren't they?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've cut them up.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: In general, like I love I love images for the Trinity, but almost always they fail at some point.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just the nature of imagery.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, the same is true for all sort of imaginative writing that you engage with.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, C.S.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis is really interesting in this, like, he does all sorts of imagery in his uh sort of lay theological writing, and always there is like a problem or a place where another image directly counters that other image.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fun.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make it bad, it just means we have to be careful with those images.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, any final thoughts?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or shall we move on?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: These verses will continue to be problematic for a very long time, um to this day.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I am going to skip four centuries to five very influential people.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um the first is Arius.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Arius is the an early fourth century heretic who is very important, and all the heretics are very important.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of respect for most of the heretics because they usually point out something really important.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: They usually ask a question that nobody has really grappled with.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what Arius does at the beginning of the fourth century.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the next on this list are Athanasius, who will spend most of the fourth century arguing why Arius is wrong.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, or the Cappadocian fathers, special reference to their sister Marcina, who basically solve the Trinitarian dynamic, or at least their solution is what is taken to be Christian orthodoxy by the end of the fourth century.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, and just as a bit of context, like Arius is a Christian, he is a priest, he prays, he thinks Jesus is Lord.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: In many ways, he's very conservative.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: The things he is concerned about are actually other Christian heresies, and um that is fascinating because he he really loves Jesus, and I think that's really important to remember when talking about Arius, because he's often labelled as like the arch heretic, and he really loves Jesus.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's no bad thing totally to be a heretic.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: We should have grace for those.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um sorry, I just realized I pointed at you before, but that's that isn't how I meant that to go.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um I like Arias.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: I like Arius too.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we should also remember that the solution that we're going to talk about, that doesn't happen like while Arius is alive.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Arius points out the problem, the church councils go, we think you're wrong, we don't know why, and then Arius dies.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a lot of I have a lot of sympathy for Arius.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think he's completely wrong.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um to be clear.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So um he basically suggests, he takes, I guess, some of these verses very, very seriously, and he wants to say, Well, the Lord our God is one, um, and Christ is the firstborn amongst creation in Colossians, um, and therefore he is better than us.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: He might be sinless, he can be the Christ, um, but he can't be what Yahweh is, right?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: He might be similar to Yahweh, so he uses a word which we translate as similar substance.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: He might be similar to Yahweh, but he cannot be Yahweh.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because how can you have one that becomes two?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um he is attempting to be very faithful to scripture, he's attempting to take these verses very seriously.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Athanasius is his best known opponent, although not the first opponent of various ideas, and he says, no, Jesus is of the same substance of the Father.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that the difference in those words is a single letter I.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So do you know the phrase there's not one I out or a difference between us?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: This comes from this debate in the fourth century between homusios and homusios, right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Single letter.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus the same as the father or is Jesus similar to the father?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we have an obvious how problem.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the church council in Nicaea in 325 agrees with Athanasius, or Athanasius' camp at the time, it's Alexander.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they just don't have a solution.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they spend the next century coming up with other heresies as to why Jesus could be the same as the Father.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna skip all of those heresies for now.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um but before we get to the answer, I just want to highlight why this matters.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it matters because of who you think Jesus is, and by extension, what does it mean for Jesus to save you?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it is God the only one who can forgive sins, and therefore, if Jesus is similar to Yahweh but not the same, that might be a problem.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do you read the Bible?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: How do you understand these verses, but also the verses in John or the baptism of Jesus?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do you understand many of our modern engagements with other world religions?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, they are all in their own way forms of Aryan thinking.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's their sort of theological root in some form.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a modern problem.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you talk to any of those people, if you work with any of those people, as you pointed out, the Trinity becomes an issue for like Christian Muslim dialogue.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we want to have good dialogue in those ways, we have to try to understand how the Trinity functions, why that's important.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So pray.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Heresy.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Heresy.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Give us your solution.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I just said the solution was like maybe there was like a lot of things.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's a hierarchy in the Trinity.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the Son is like the Father, but lower.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it was like the word is like Hatori, I'm getting wrong.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, that's what I was saying.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's important.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because like this is a a genuine response that people have.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a genuine response in the fourth century.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because Arius is saying, this is why I was like, we'll move on to it, because Arius is going to say it.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a Jesus is a similar substance.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you're saying, father.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you want to go when when you're in the religious light on the tall yeah, okay, cool.
• 19:51
  unknown: Can't do.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe don't do.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can't do maybe because you're basically saying bits of the divine essence are restricted.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that basically is that actually the same problem?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So for your view, you're going, well, what makes the father better than the son?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is is the father more of God?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are you saying Jesus doesn't have quite as much God in him?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like, I think the thing is my interpretation of the word, like in the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I'm speaking to you, and it's like, you know, vocal codes and stuff.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then our vocal codes is not me as a whole, so like it's just a part, a small part of the thing.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he's so that view in its original form is uh comes from Gnosticism, and Gnosticism has this idea of like emanations of the divine.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a great divine, and the divine gets lower and lower and lower until you get basically to us who are like the lowest, like we're we're not divine at all, basically.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And there's different forms of that, but it's like, well, why can Jesus have a bit of God but not all of God?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like how can Jesus, even if Jesus, like the problem of how can you have two who's also one or three who's also one, I don't think is actually solved by that.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're saying Jesus is a good bit of it, but he's not all of it, and actually or you're saying Jesus is this bit and the father's that bit, and they're actually so distinct that you've now made almost two gods.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think it solves a problem, but now you just make Jesus not as good as the Father.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: But isn't that on there like isn't there a verse here?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus emptied himself out.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Christ hymn in Philippians 2.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: The one of the not on my list of problematic verses, but uh in in the list of problematic verses.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, if there's a reduction in the order.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a question of whether it's a reduction, what does can so the word kenosis of self emptying, what does that mean?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: In and actually are we talking about the the relationship Jesus has as An enfleshed human.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because when Jesus is human, he obviously, he's at that point, at least in his earthly ministry, not everywhere.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Although in Ephesians we get this idea that the Son ascends bodily to omnipresence, which is fascinating.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: In Ephesians 4, I think that is.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that more of like a self-restriction of divine majesty.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And is that then a like you don't he's not born and you're like, there's God.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what we're talking about?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than the like a nature of God.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see those those are slightly different things?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So role distinction is a very common way of talking about this.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It still doesn't solve our problem.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Role distinction then becomes really helpful.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that is excellent in about a minute's time.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_05: I was going to say, just looking at the Christ and then Philippians in 6, it says Jesus, who being in the very nature God, did not consider his equality with God's stuff to be used to consider there isn't this like bio.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so the idea of equality is there.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And actually in Colossians 2, verse 9, uh, I should realize there's some minute, for in Christ the fullness of deity lives in bodily form, which becomes a problem for that.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is Jesus just a bit of God?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how can he be the fullness of deity?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the problem because the Bible is it's not giving you a fully worked out Trinitarian theology.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have to work to understand why these passages mean certain things and how they relate to each other.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I love it, because it's like puzzle solving, it's like really fun.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um sorry, I'm getting nerdy.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, so two words.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone seen these words?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Usia and hypostasis?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um at the beginning of the fourth century, these are two philosophical sort of Greek words that basically mean the same thing.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So usea means essence, being, that sort of thing, first order being.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And hypostastis is usually used as like a second order being.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: A bit like beings, not quite the same, but they're like used in the same sorts of ways.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the Cappadocian fathers, uh, Basil, Gregory, and Gregory, um those three lads, they um they are neoplatonically trained thinkers who are Christians.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so they are thinking about word use and linguistics, and they go, well, what if one of these words just means something slightly different?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: What if hypostasis is more is more than it is not just like a secondary form of substance?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: What if it is more like a who-ness, right?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: So what if we use ustea, meaning being, first order substance, to be like the whatness, so like the godness or the humanness or the cowness or whatever.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the hypostasis becomes, well, who are you?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like the individual, the individualization of that substance.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they suggest that you can you could have one Usia across three hypostasis, right?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we have one divine essence that is shared amongst all three persons, and those three persons are individualized hypostasis.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you have the individualism as hypostasis of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that is basically how they solve it.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: They just change the meaning of some words because they think that best reflects what's happening in scripture, where you have a very clear distinction between these persons, and you have very clearly this idea that Christ is God and that the Spirit is God.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't talked about the Spirit as much, but this idea that the in particular in the Old Testament, the Spirit is often going from the Father is related to the Father, is the wisdom of God, etc.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the Father is still there, he's not becoming the Son, right?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: He he doesn't one of the early heresies is patripassionism, which is the idea that the Father suffers as the Son on the cross.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a modalism.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the father becomes the son, and then the son becomes the spirit.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is not that, it's saying, well, the father always exists, and the son always exists, and the spirit always exists.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we have skipped over some quite important bits.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so origin in the second century talks about this idea of the eternal generation of the word.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, the son is begotten by the father, but the son is begotten throughout all of eternity without beginning.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you can say the father brings two seconds, brings forth the son, but that bringing forth has no beginning.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's an eternal begetting, which is why the Nicene Creed changes at the Constantinoplean Creed, and you get hypostasis in the first Nicene Creed is ruled out and then is not ruled out in the Constantinople version, because the words change in meaning and the way that we think about the sun changes.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Question.
• 28:02
  unknown: So God has I know God is eternally free, but is that of choice or is that an inherent fact about God?
• 28:10
  unknown: God can use to be free.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good question.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because it's sort of a counterfactual, because uh it's not as though circumstances thrust onto God and he just is, therefore, based on something, nor is God then at some point choosing to be three.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's another bit of theology called pure act, which is that God uh God doesn't start, he's a fully actualized being, because otherwise and also divine simplicity, which is that God is identical with his essence.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, because if God is not identical with his essence, then the idea of being precedes God ontologically.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So being has to exist in order for God to possess the characteristic of being, which is a bit mind-blowing, therefore, God must be being itself.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if God is being itself and is fully actualized, then it's not as though something is forced upon God, but nor is it that it's God is upset with who he is, because he's in action and and this abundant community of love and self-giving, and like like what does it mean for God to talk to like does God need the creation?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Can God be loving without the creation?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because God is three.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that was a lot in 30 seconds.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: So in the hypostasis thing, could is the image of um that I would frequently use of water?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: So water in nature is H2O, but can appear as water or ice or steam.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, third heresy of the evening.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh triple point.
• 30:01
  unknown: That's better.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: Triple point, don't get triple point.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is better.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um interestingly, that is an example that's used in like the third century and then is called a heresy.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but not that final bit, but the early bit.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: So water doesn't become ice, then becomes steam, but actually at the triple point, all three.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Does something change in their makeup in that process?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's just the correct temperature, the correct pressure, ex physics feature.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's why I don't know that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: That probably works.
• 30:33
  unknown: I think it probably works.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Probably works.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not confident enough in my physics to say yes or no.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: But but probably works.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are all extra.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: The same, as long as everything is the same in essence, and you have the three, then yes, it works.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why things like the cake example don't work, because you have it is the same cake, but you take that piece away and you're like, well, is it still the same cake?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's why, like, the water example doesn't normally work, because if water then becomes ice, for example, well, then the father has become the son, is no longer no longer the father.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: You still you still don't have the threeness.
• 31:10
  unknown: That's my goal for the trick point.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just for this very moment.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so before we do a brief bit of QA, um to return to the quest some of the questions I asked you at the beginning, which I don't know if I've totally answered.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why Trinity, why three and not two or four or five?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, partly because actually it's the way in which God seems to reveal himself in both the New Testament and the Old Testament.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the the other one that might sometimes get raised is this idea of wisdom, the wisdom of God.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the wisdom is appropriated by the Son and the Spirit at different times.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it doesn't seem to be a distinct actor.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's certainly not distinct in the same way that with that the baptismal scene, where you seem to have God as Father, Son, and Spirit just as present.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's why we haven't talked about wisdom, and that is why three seems to be the thing.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, why do we use this word?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Trinity itself is a word developed by Totullian, Trinitas, that is then used to describe these three.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hypostasis and Usia, we have covered, um, even if you haven't seen them before.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: And where these things come up in the Bible, hopefully we have also covered.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are lots of other things we could say.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are loads of other.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like we just covered what I cover in like eight weeks or something in a first-year course.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: So congratulations.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but any questions?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you had to explain this to like a three-year-old, how would you I like the baptismal scene in Matthew, because you just have three persons who are active in relationship with each other, who are clearly related, who are clearly said to be the one divine, the one divine being.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore you have three and also one.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there is some paradox, and some of it doesn't make sense, and Christianity is perfectly fine with that.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh advisory, I know it's the Bible.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no, but I I'm just wondering if you're probably gonna point your thing and label me as something else.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, the problem isn't just scriptures, but actually us in our humanity.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: How we how we read the label.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's this idea of the most basic deuteronomy that one is one, like they're all just one.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And once you read them back, I think, thinking with a Trinitarian framework, they become much easier to unpick as to why these work.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: So um, like all the church fathers are going, yes, the Lord your God is one.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't isn't really a problem for Trinitarian theology.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is the one divine essence.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it looks like a problem if you don't have the language to describe the Trinity.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: The um John 14 could be more of a reference to the human nature, that idea of that we saw with Philippians and the Christ Him.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for Christ to empty himself to not count his equality with God?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and reading like scripture together is important, right?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, John is saying that there, but we've already read John 1, where he's saying in the beginning is the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't just take John 14 and say, Well, therefore, that overrides John 1.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Proverbs 8, this is a bedrock of eternal generation, um, which we talked about a little bit.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Colossians 1:15, uh, writes, role, distinction, like the Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all of all creation.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: When we think of firstborn language in scripture, often that's about what are the privileges of being the firstborn.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's really important to who Jesus is in terms of his authority as as God, because he has a specific role, and the Father has a specific role, and the Spirit has a specific role.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, they're not they're not really problems, but they're problems uh well until we try to work out how we read scripture cohesively, I guess.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because we always could always come back to that verse in Colossians 2.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: For in Christ the fullness of deity lives in bodily form.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: In like the roles.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a whole chapter of this in my PhD, and I haven't read it recently.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could give you some things, so like it's the father's job to generate the son and to cause the spiration of the spirit.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's the son's role to come incarnate, so it's not the father or the spirit who come incarnate, I would say.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um the spirit indwells amongst creation.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, that probably would be how I frame it.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: The the easiest way of framing it would be it's the father who generates, the son who is generated, and the spirit who spirates.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's because otherwise, as soon as you start saying other things, you start to get yourself into thorny problems where you go, but in this random verse in Leviticus, the father does that.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that can become difficult, and there's this other piece of there's another doctrine called inseparable operations, which is this idea that no work of of any of God is a is all of it is a work of the fullness of God.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So even if it is like even if it comes through uh what we see as a primary person, that isn't just Jesus acting on his own.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's always in perfect relationship with the Father and the Spirit.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: The same is true of the Spirit and also of the Father.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of these acts are acts of the fullness of God, which is why I have problems with like the song Um about Jesus on the cross and it's like the Father turns his face away.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't like that because I don't think that makes sense theologically, because then you have divided, oh sorry, the son and the father.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, is Jesus not God anymore?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus God over there?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't I don't I don't think that makes sense.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of like God possibly there, um I think there is a difference between um I think you have free will, and I think you have the ability to ignore God.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we see, I think, a lot throughout the Bible is that God is in relationship with Himself and what we are invited into because of the work of Jesus and then the coming of the Spirit is for the Spirit to indwell within us.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that act, but that does require I don't want to say it does require us because there are definitely times in this in but the Bible where where God forces things to happen, but in general I think they are the exception, not the rule, and in general we are invited into a relationship where the coming of the spirit transforms us, and it's through that relationship that we change and are made like Christ.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not something God is going to necessarily usually going to force on you.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a part of our journey.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: So John testif um so in verse fourteen it says, The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 15, John testified concerning him, he cried out, saying, This is the one I spoke about when when I said, He come, he who comes after me has surpassed me, because he was before me.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and obviously John is older as well.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um out of this fullness we have received grace given.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's um, and then yeah, into verse 17, for the law was given through Moses, uh, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: So by the end of that passage, he's linking everything very much explicitly to the person of Jesus, whereas in the beginning he's just talking about the word.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think just because God in his being doesn't change doesn't mean there aren't individual actions that we experience differently in the 21st century to the first century or the fifth century BC or what have you.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that's not the same as God changing.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um Pentecost makes a difference to the activity of God in the world, just as the incarnation makes an activity to the activity of God in the world.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that difference primarily is as you describe it, it's no longer just the spirit descends upon a single person or maybe two people, but descends upon the people.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I also think we sometimes don't uh we've particularly since the Enlightenment in the West, we have become very focused on individualization and like moments and times.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think actually we probably need to pay more attention to things like ritual and what the corporate means in the presence of God.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that does make a difference.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: So thing, particularly like sacramental things like baptism and Eucharist, I think there's something about the body of Christ being gathered, and you see bits of that in the New Testament, so like why is it where two or more are gathered?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is present.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you have an individual relationship, of course you do, but why does two people make a difference?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but I think there's something about the community that is important, um, and so and that is actually quite more much more similar to the Old Testament in that it's the it's the gathering of the people at like the temple and the ritual presence that that is important.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the same by any means, but I think there's there is levels of continuity that we we sometimes miss in the modern world.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a friend who's saying wouldn't we consider heresy?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, I wouldn't consider it a heresy because it I just think it's an overly restrictive theology.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, because that yeah, the spirit is fully God, it's just the the joke is the joke often is it's Father, Son, and Holy Scriptures.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: But they would say they would say it's only by the Spirit that the scriptures are made alive.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is actually a really important theological point that they would make there.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that's a bit too restrictive as a charismatic.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am obviously biased just as they are.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's a direct quote of Psalm 22, which is a lament psalm, and the lament psalm ends with, if I just get that up, um Psalm 22 ends with the presence of God, not not the absence.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I feel like it's a bit of a you sing the first line and you know the second line, like he's like communicating something that comes.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, verse 1 in Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you far from saving me, so far from my cries and anguish?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um then this is verse from verse 27.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: All of the rich of the earth will feast and worship, all who go down to the dust will kneel before him.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Those who cannot keep themselves alive, prosperity will serve him.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Future generations will be told about the Lord, they will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn, he has done it.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that final point of he has done it, I think is what Jesus is communicating by saying the first line.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I also don't think it's it's not a problem to say that Jesus is in pain and upset on the cross, of course he is, but that feeling of forsakenness is not the same as forsakenness.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly in the human nature, but and particularly when he's also saying, but God is also here and he is doing something now.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, is that the is that time?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be around if you have any more questions.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you very much.
• 44:32
  unknown: Yeah.