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Theology Proper: Doctrine of God · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to reformed thinking. It's good to be here.
• 0:02
  You know, I'm holding the stack of notes, and normally when we
• 0:05
  do a deep dive, it's on something like a new piece of
• 0:08
  tech or maybe a historical event, right?
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  But today we are going straight to, I guess you could call it,
• 0:15
  the source code of reality itself.
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  We're looking at The Moody Handbook of Theology by Paul
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  Ends, and we're also cracking open the Westminster Confession.
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  And that's a good way to frame it.
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  I mean, we really aren't just talking about, you know,
• 0:29
  religion, just practices or some cultural habits today.
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  We're talking about the very thing that, if it's true, makes
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  sense of everything else. We're talking about theology
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  proper now. Before anyone tunes out thinking
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  this is going to be some dusty seminary lecture, let's just
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  clear up the definition. The word theology gets thrown
• 0:47
  around an awful lot. It does, and people often use it
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  to just mean anything vaguely spiritual.
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  But if you actually go back to the Greek, it's much more
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  precise. You have the theos, which is
• 0:57
  God, and you have logos, which means word or discourse.
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  So it really it's just a discourse about God.
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  It's the act of thinking and speaking about who God is.
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  But Paul ends in the handbook. He makes a point of
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  distinguishing between theology in that big broad sense and
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  theology proper. So what's the difference there?
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  Think of theology as a giant umbrella, OK?
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  And under that umbrella you've got all these other studies.
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  You have the studies, the salvation, the study of the
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  Church, angels, end times, all of those are theological
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  categories, but theology proper is the specific, really focused
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  study of God the Father Himself. It's asking the most basic
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  questions. Does he exist?
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  What is he like and how does he relate to the world?
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  It's the foundation then it is. If you get that foundation
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  wrong, the whole house just collapses.
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  A warped view of God the Father is going to lead to a warped
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  view of salvation or the church or anything else.
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  That's it precisely. And that's really our mission
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  for this discussion. We want to try to move past
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  these, you know, these vague cultural ideas, the man upstairs
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  or higher power, and get to a very specific biblical
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  understanding of who he is. We're going to look at his
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  existence, his attributes. And because this is Reformed
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  thinking, we're going to look at his sovereign decrees.
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  I think we have to start with the most basic question
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  possible. Is he there?
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  I suspect most people listening probably believe in God, but
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  maybe they couldn't really articulate why they do other
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  than just saying well I have faith and lays out some of these
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  rational arguments for God's existence.
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  He does. It's a good point to make right
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  at the start that as Christians, our position is one of faith.
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  We believe the Bible is the word of God, but that faith isn't
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  irrational. It doesn't mean you check your
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  brain at the door ends presents what are known as the theistic
• 2:45
  proofs. And these are just logical
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  arguments that point toward the necessity of a Creator.
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  The first one he gets into is the cosmological argument, and I
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  should probably clarify for everyone, this has nothing to do
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  with mixing cocktails. No, no, it comes from the Greek
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  word cosmos, which just means world or universe.
• 3:02
  And the logic here is inductive. You look at the world around
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  you, that's the effect, and you reason backward to find the
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  cause. The classic illustration here,
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  and I love this one because it's so simple and so hard to argue
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  with, is the Watchmaker. It's a great one.
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  Imagine you're walking through a forest, really dense forest,
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  miles from anywhere. You look down and on a tree
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  stump there's a bolover wristwatch just sitting there.
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  You pick it up. You see the glass face, the
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  metal casing, the little leather strap.
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  You hold it to your ear. You can hear it ticking.
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  You can see the gears all moving in perfect synchronization,
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  marking time. You would never, not in a
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  million years, assume that you know the wind and the rain and
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  the lucky strike of lightning just happened to hit a hunk of
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  metal and form that watch. It would be an absurd conclusion
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  to come to. Yeah, you instinctively know
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  where there's a mechanism. There has to be a mechanic.
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  Where there's a watch, there must be a watchmaker.
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  So the cosmological argument just applies that same logic to
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  the whole universe. That's right, the universe is an
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  infinitely more complex effect than a watch.
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  Every effect has to have a cause.
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  Therefore, there must be a first 'cause behind the universe
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  something or someone powerful enough to bring it all into
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  being. OK, so the cosmological argument
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  basically says there has to be a cause, but it doesn't tell us a
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  whole lot about what that cause is like.
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  And that, I guess, is where the next argument comes in the
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  teleological argument. Right.
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  And this one comes from the Greek word telos which means end
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  or goal or purpose. This is the argument from
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  design. It builds directly on the first
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  one. It says, OK, not only is there a
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  universe, but this universe is incredibly meticulously ordered
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  and fine-tuned. The numbers that Ends lays out
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  here are they're just mind boggling.
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  It really puts our whole existence into perspective.
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  He talks about, for instance, the position of the Earth in the
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  solar system. It's what some scientists call
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  the Goldilocks zone. The Goldilocks zone, yeah.
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  The sun is 93,000,000 miles away from us.
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  That is a very, very specific number.
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  If the Earth were just a tiny percentage closer to the sun,
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  the heat would be far too intense, the oceans would boil
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  off into space, all life would be scorched, and.
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  What if we were just a little bit further out?
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  Would be an ice planet, a frozen rock.
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  Life as we know it would freeze solid.
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  We are positioned on an absolute razor's edge of sustainability.
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  Or or look at the moon. It's 240,000 miles away.
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  That's not a random number. That specific distance controls
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  the gravitational pull on our oceans.
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  If the moon were closer, the tides would be so enormous that
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  they would submerge most of the continents twice a day.
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  That's a terrifying thought. So you have the sun giving us
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  the perfect amount of heat, the moon regulating the tides, and
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  then you have the tilt of the earth giving a season so we can
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  grow food. It all it all.
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  That all looks like it was set up this way on purpose.
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  That's the argument. Order implies intelligence.
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  You do not get complex functional systems are merging
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  from chaos. Ends uses a pretty colorful
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  analogy to debunk the whole idea of chance, he says.
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  Expecting the universe to happen by accident is like expecting a
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  monkey to type out the complete works of Shakespeare just by
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  randomly banging on a typewriter.
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  I've heard that one before. You know, if you give a million
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  monkeys a million years on a million.
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  Typewriters. Statistically, it's just
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  nonsense. You might get a word, you might
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  get the word the eventually, but you will not get Hamlet.
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  You definitely won't get the sonnets.
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  Chaos doesn't produce code, and the universe is written in code.
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  DNA, the laws of physics, gravity, all of it.
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  That demands a designer. So we have the argument from the
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  universe itself, the cosmological, and the argument
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  from design, the teleological. But and says we also have to
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  just look in the mirror. This is the anthropological
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  argument. And anthropos is the Greek word
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  for man. So this argument shifts the
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  focus from, say, physics to human nature.
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  If you listen to a strict materialist or an atheist, they
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  are forced to argue that a human being is just biology.
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  We're just a collection of cells, chemical reactions,
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  electrical impulses. We're basically meat machines.
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  But we don't live like we're meat machines.
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  Not at all. No, we don't.
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  We possess intellect. We have deep emotions, we have a
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  will, we create art, we grieve over loss.
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  We have this deep yearning for justice.
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  The anthropological argument says that you cannot get a
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  moral, intellectual, emotional being from non moral, non
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  intellectual matter. A rock doesn't worry about its
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  legacy. A tree doesn't feel guilty when
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  one of its branches falls on another tree.
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  We seem to reflect something higher, and that ties right into
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  the moral argument. I think this is the one that
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  really trips up the secular worldview the most.
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  It is because it's the hardest for them to explain away.
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  Humans have this innate sense of right and wrong.
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  Romans chapter 2 talks about this, that the Gentiles who
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  don't have the law of Moses still show that the work of the
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  law is written on their hearts. We have a conscience.
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  And this is universal, right? It's not just a, you know, a
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  Western idea. Yes, absolutely universal.
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  Every culture in human history has had some concept of murder
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  being wrong, of theft being wrong, of courage being good.
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  The specific applications might vary, but the fundamental
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  structure of morality is there. If evolution is true and it's
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  all just about survival of the fittest, why is altruism
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  considered a virtue if I sacrifice my life for a complete
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  stranger, biologically speaking, that is a terrible move.
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  I've just removed my genes from the pool.
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  But morally, we look at that person and we say that is a
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  hero. Exactly.
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  We recognize an objective standard of what is good, and if
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  there is a moral law, there must be a moral lawgiver.
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  You can't have a command without a commander.
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  And mentions one more argument, but he seems to put a little
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  asterisk next to it, the ontological argument.
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  This one is the real brain twister.
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  It comes to us from Anselm back in the Middle Ages.
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  The other arguments we've been talking about are all inductive.
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  They start with the evidence. You can see this one is
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  deductive. It starts with just an idea.
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  This is one that goes God is that then, which nothing greater
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  can be conceived. That's the one.
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  It argues that existence is a perfection.
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  It is better to exist than not to exist.
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  So if God is the greatest conceivable being, he must
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  exist, because if he only existed in our minds, he
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  wouldn't actually be. The greatest of being that
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  exists in reality would be greater.
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  I have to be honest, that one feels like a philosophical word
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  game to me. And you're not alone in that.
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  And himself admits that this argument isn't very useful for,
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  you know, practical apologetics. You're not going to sit down
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  with a skeptic, layout the ontological argument, and then
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  watch them drop to their knees. It's more of a logical exercise
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  for those who already believe the evidence from creation.
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  And our own conscience is much more powerful for the average
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  person. So those are the arguments for
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  God, but to really get a handle on theology proper we also have
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  to look at the alternative views and spends a good bit of time
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  breaking down the anti theistic theories.
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  It's important you have to know what you're up against, and it
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  really helps to clarify your own position when you see the
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  alternatives. He starts with atheism, of
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  course, but he breaks it down into three different types,
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  which I found really helpful. The first type is the dogmatic
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  atheist. This is the person who openly,
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  verbally repudiates God. This is your Richard Dawkins or
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  Christopher Hitchens type. They're out there debating,
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  writing books, actively fighting against the idea of God.
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  But that's a pretty small percentage of the population.
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  The next category he mentions is way, way bigger.
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  The Practical Atheist. And this is the one that should
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  really worry us. The practical atheist might not
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  deny God with their lips. They might even check a box on a
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  form saying they believe, but they live their day-to-day lives
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  as if God does not exist. They're Christian on the census
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  form, but they're an atheist in their checkbook.
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  That's a great way to put it. In their business dealings, in
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  their relationships and their private ethics, God is simply
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  not a factor. He is irrelevant to their daily
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  operation. NS warns that this is a very
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  dangerous place to be, and it's very, very common even inside
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  the church. And there's the third one, the
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  virtual atheist. This one sounds a bit more
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  academic. It is ends links this to
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  theologians like Paul Tillich. These are people who still use
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  the word God, but they redefine it so much that it loses all of
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  its biblical meaning. They might call God the ground
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  of all being or something similar.
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  They deny that he is a person. They deny that he's a creator.
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  They essentially turn God into an abstract concept.
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  Which allows them to sound spiritual without being
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  accountable to an actual person. Correct.
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  After atheism you have agnosticism.
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  This term was coined by Thomas Huxley.
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  Agnosis literally means no knowledge, the agnostic says.
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  I don't know if God exists, and I don't believe we can now.
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  It's a position of suspended judgement.
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  Right. And usually it's based on a very
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  strict scientific materialism, the idea that if I can't measure
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  God in a test tube or observe him with a telescope, I can't
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  confirm that he's real. We also have these worldviews
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  that do admit there's something divine out there, but they just
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  get the nature of it wrong, like polytheism.
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  Which is the belief in many gods.
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  This was pretty much the default for the ancient world.
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  The Egyptians had a God for the sun, a God for the Nile River, a
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  God for frogs, a God for gnats. And pantheism.
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  This one I feel like confuses a lot of people because it sounds
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  kind of nice. God is in everything.
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  We have to be really careful with our prepositions there.
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  As Christians, we believe God is present everywhere.
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  Pantheism believes God is everything, God is all, and all
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  is God. Spinoza was a famous pantheist.
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  The idea is that the tree is God, the rock is God, you are
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  God. But if everything is God, then
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  God isn't a person, he's just. He becomes just a force or an
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  essence. You can't pray to a tree.
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  You can't have a relationship with the law of gravity.
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  Pantheism completely destroys the personality of God.
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  And finally, there's deism. This is the absentee landlord
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  theory. This is hugely.
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  Popular during the Enlightenment period, the idea is that God is
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  the creator. He built the universe, wounded
• 13:00
  up like a giant clock, and then he just left.
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  He walked away. He's transcendent, but not
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  imminent. Precisely.
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  He's out there somewhere, but he's not here.
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  He doesn't answer prayer, he doesn't intervene in history.
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  He just watches from a distance. Which is a terribly lonely
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  worldview, when you think about it.
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  It implies that we're basically orphans.
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  It does, and Reformed thinking, and biblical theology more
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  broadly, rejects all of these. We believe in a God who is
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  personal, who is knowable, who is active and who is present.
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  And that leads us right into the next major section, the
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  attributes of God. This is where we get into The
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  Who of God? What is he actually like?
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  Ends uses the categories from the Westminster Confession.
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  Here he talks about absolute attributes and relative
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  attributes or sometimes you hear them called incommunicable and
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  communicable. That distinction is really
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  helpful for us to understand the massive gap between God and us.
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  Incommunicable refers to attributes that belong to God
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  alone, things we cannot share in.
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  Communicable refers to attributes that we can reflect,
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  but only in a limited, creaturely way.
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  OK. Let's look at the absolute, the
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  incommunicable ones first, The things that make God God.
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  First up, spirituality. God is spirit.
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  He does not have a physical body.
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  He is immaterial. But wait a second.
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  The Bible talks all the time about God's hands.
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  It talks about his eyes roaming the earth.
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  It talks about his strong arm. What do we do with that?
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  That's a great question. What theologians call that is
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  anthropomorphism. It's a compound word, anthropos
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  for man and morpha for form. It's God speaking to us in human
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  terms so that our finite minds can begin to understand Him.
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  So it's figurative language. It is when the Bible speaks of
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  God to hand. It's a metaphor or for his power
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  or his intervention. His eyes represent his
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  knowledge. It doesn't mean he has physical
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  eyelids and retinas. This is why the second
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  commandment is so strict about not making any graven images.
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  That's exactly why you cannot carve a statue of a spirit.
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  The moment you make a statue of God as an old man with a beard
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  or as an animal, you are limiting him.
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  You're lying about his true nature.
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  OK, the next attribute is self existence.
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  The fancy word for it is assayety.
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  And this is a truly mind bending concept.
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  It comes right from Exodus 3.14 where God says to Moses, I am
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  WHOI am I am. God depends on nothing and no
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  one for his existence. Think about us.
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  We are profoundly needy creatures.
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  A baby needs its mother, a plant needs the sun.
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  Even the strongest person in the world needs oxygen, food and
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  water every single day. We're completely dependent
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  beings. We're sustained by things
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  outside of ourselves. Every moment.
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  But God is the only independent being in existence.
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  Yeah, life in Himself. He existed for all eternity past
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  without the universe. He didn't need to create us to
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  feel happy or fulfilled. He didn't need us to complete
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  Him. He chose to create us out of His
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  good pleasure. That really changes how you view
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  worship, doesn't it? We aren't doing God a favor by
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  showing up to church on Sunday. He doesn't need our energy to
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  survive. Not at all.
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  We are the beneficiaries of worship, not the benefactors.
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  Then we have the attribute of immutability.
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  Malachi 3.6. I, the Lord, do not change.
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  In a world where absolutely everything changes, our
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  technology, our politics, our own bodies, this is a huge
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  source of comfort. It is the anchor of the
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  Christian life. If God were mutable, if He could
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  change, we could never be secure in our salvation.
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  He might love us today and decide he hates us tomorrow.
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  He might decide that the promise of salvation in John 3.16 is
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  null and void next week. But he.
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  Can't, because he is immutable. His character is fixed.
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  He cannot get any better because he is already perfect, and he
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  cannot get any worse because he is incapable of decay.
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  His promises are certain. Now let's move on to the omnis.
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  These are attributes that are relative to creation, and the
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  first one is omnipresence. This takes us back to that
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  distinction with pantheism we made earlier.
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  Pantheism says God is the grass. Omnipresence says God is present
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  with the grass. Psalm 139 is the classic text
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  for this. Where can I go from your spirit?
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  Where can I flee from your presence?
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  If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
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  If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
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  Right. And a key clarification is
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  needed here. Does that mean that a part of
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  God is here in this room and another part of God is in China?
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  I was just about to ask that. No, that would mean God is
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  divisible, which he is not. Theologians say say he is not
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  stretched out like a thin layer of butter over a piece of bread.
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  He is fully present in every single point of space in the
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  totality of his essence. He is as fully present right
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  here as he is in the furthest Galaxy.
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  Wow. OK then, omniscience.
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  He knows everything. He knows all things actual, So
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  what has happened and what is happening right now, and he
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  knows all things possible, what would happen in any given
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  circumstance if it were different, and he knows all of
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  this intuitively. What do you mean by intuitively
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  that he doesn't have to figure it out right?
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  We learn discursively. We learn A, then we learn B, and
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  then from that we figure out C God doesn't learn.
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  He never has an aha moment. He never discovers a new fact.
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  He knows the end from the beginning, in one single eternal
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  act of knowing. And then omnipotence.
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  All powerful. And here we have to deal with
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  the skeptics. Favorite little riddles?
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  Ah yes, can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?
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  Or can God make a square circle? I remember kids asking that on
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  the playground. Me too.
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  Omnipotence means that God can do all things that are
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  consistent with his nature. He cannot do the absurd like
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  make a square circle, because that's a logical contradiction.
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  It's not a thing that can be done.
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  It's just nonsense words. OK, and more to the point, God
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  cannot do the sinful. He cannot lie.
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  Titus 1.2 says so. He cannot deny himself.
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  So his inability to lie isn't a lack of power, it's actually a
• 18:46
  proof of his perfection. That's exactly If God could lie,
• 18:50
  he would be corrupt. He'd be less than God.
• 18:52
  Yeah. His power is always exercised in
• 18:53
  harmony with his perfect character.
• 18:55
  That bridges us perfectly into the moral attributes.
• 18:57
  These are the communicable attributes, the ones we were
• 18:59
  called to imitate in some way. And Ends is clear that the
• 19:02
  foremost attribute, the one that defines all the others, is
• 19:05
  holiness. Holiness is the background color
• 19:08
  for the entire portrait of God. The word itself means set apart.
• 19:12
  He's distinct from His creation, and He is totally and utterly
• 19:16
  separate from sin. It's telling that in Isaiah
• 19:19
  chapter 6, the angels in his presence don't cry.
• 19:22
  Love, love, love, they cry. Holy, holy, holy.
• 19:26
  His love is a holy love. His justice is a holy justice.
• 19:29
  Everything flows from His Holiness.
• 19:31
  Speaking of love, we really need to define that biblically.
• 19:34
  We use the word love for everything.
• 19:35
  You know, I love my wife and I love tacos.
• 19:38
  Hopefully not in the same way. Hopefully not.
• 19:39
  The primary Greek word used for God's love is agape.
• 19:43
  It's very distinct from Eros, which is romantic or sexual
• 19:46
  love, or filia, which is brotherly affection or
• 19:48
  friendship. So what is Agape?
• 19:50
  Agape is a reasoned out affection.
• 19:52
  It's a choice of the will to set affection on an object, not just
• 19:55
  an emotional impulse, and typically in the New Testament,
• 19:57
  it's love that is directed for an object that is unworthy of
• 20:00
  that love. So God loves us, not because we
• 20:03
  are so lovable, but because He is love.
• 20:06
  That's the heart of it, and that connects directly to mercy and
• 20:09
  grace. I find that many Christians use
• 20:11
  these two words interchangeably, but ends draws a beautiful sharp
• 20:14
  line between them. What's the difference?
• 20:16
  Mercy, the Hebrew word for it is cheesed, is goodness that is
• 20:20
  shown to those who are in misery or distress.
• 20:23
  It's God looking at our suffering, our pain, our
• 20:26
  brokenness, and offering relief. Grace, the Greek word is karis,
• 20:31
  is unmerited favor shown to those who are under
• 20:33
  condemnation. It is God looking at our guilt,
• 20:36
  our sin, our rebellion and offering forgiveness.
• 20:39
  So mercy helps the miserable, while grace saves the guilty.
• 20:43
  That is a fantastic way to put it.
• 20:45
  And finally, justice. We tend to fear God's justice.
• 20:48
  We want a God who is soft and overlooks things.
• 20:51
  But ANZ argues that justice is absolutely essential to God's
• 20:54
  goodness. Because a God who ignores evil
• 20:56
  isn't a good God. Of course not.
• 20:58
  A judge who lets murderers and thieves go free is a corrupt
• 21:01
  judge. Justice simply means that God
• 21:03
  always acts in accordance with His own perfect moral law.
• 21:07
  It is remunerative, He rewards obedience, and it is
• 21:10
  retributive. He punishes the wicked.
• 21:12
  We cannot have a moral universe without retributive justice.
• 21:15
  The cross of Christ is actually the ultimate display of both
• 21:18
  God's justice and His love meeting together.
• 21:21
  We've talked about His nature. Now I want to shift and talk
• 21:23
  about His identifiers. Section 4 in the handbook is on
• 21:27
  the names of God. In our culture, a name is
• 21:30
  usually just a label. I'm just host.
• 21:31
  You're just expert. Doesn't really mean anything.
• 21:33
  But in the Bible, a name reveals character.
• 21:36
  It does. To know the name of God is to
• 21:38
  know something vital about His nature.
• 21:40
  Ends highlights 3 primary names in the Old Testament.
• 21:43
  The first one we run into in the Bible is Elohim, Genesis 1.1.
• 21:47
  In the beginning Elohim created. Elohim is a plural noun.
• 21:51
  Scholars often call it the plural of majesty.
• 21:54
  It emphasizes His immense power, His strength.
• 21:56
  His transcendence is the name of God as the mighty Creator.
• 22:00
  When you look up at the stars, or stand at the foot of a
• 22:02
  mountain, or consider the complexity of a single cell, you
• 22:06
  are seeing the work of Elohim. Then there is Adonai.
• 22:09
  Adonai means Lord or master. This name establishes the
• 22:12
  relationship between God and His people.
• 22:15
  If he is Adonai, then we are His servants.
• 22:18
  It implies ownership and authority.
• 22:20
  It's a constant reminder that we are not our own.
• 22:22
  We were bought with a price. And then there's the big one,
• 22:25
  the personal name Yahweh. YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, the
• 22:29
  four letters. This is the covenant name of
• 22:31
  God. It is directly related to that I
• 22:33
  am statement from the burning Bush.
• 22:35
  This is the name God used when he redeemed Israel from slavery
• 22:38
  in Egypt. It reveals that he is not just a
• 22:40
  distant creator, Elohim, or as boss Adonai, but a God who
• 22:45
  enters into a personal relationship.
• 22:47
  He makes promises and He keeps them.
• 22:49
  And we also see those compound names all through the Old
• 22:52
  Testament, don't we? El Shaddai, God Almighty, El
• 22:55
  Elian, God Most High El Olam, the Everlasting God.
• 22:58
  It's like looking at a perfectly cut diamond.
• 23:01
  You turn it just slightly and a new facet catches the light and
• 23:05
  sparkles. No single name can capture the
• 23:09
  fullness of who God is, so Scripture uses many different
• 23:13
  names to build a composite picture of His glory.
• 23:16
  All right now we are entering the deep end of the theological
• 23:19
  pool, Section 5, the Trinity. This is where a lot of people
• 23:23
  get confused. This is where all the bad
• 23:25
  analogies come out. Like God is like an egg with the
• 23:28
  shell, the white and the yolk. And we should probably just go
• 23:31
  ahead and avoid all of those analogies because they almost
• 23:34
  always lead to some form of heresy.
• 23:36
  The Trinity is a mystery, yes, but it is a revealed mystery.
• 23:40
  We need to be very precise with our language here.
• 23:42
  So what are the ditches on either side of the road that
• 23:44
  we're trying to avoid? On one side you have the heresy
• 23:46
  of tritheism. That's the belief that there are
• 23:48
  three separate gods who just kind of hang out and work
• 23:51
  together. That's just atheism with a
• 23:53
  Christian label. And on the other side.
• 23:55
  On the other side, you have modalism.
• 23:58
  This is the belief that there's only one divine person, but he
• 24:01
  wears different masks at different times.
• 24:03
  Sometimes he acts like the Father, and he takes that mask
• 24:06
  off and acts like the Son, and then he acts like the spirit.
• 24:09
  That's also called sibelianism. Right, Yes, that's the
• 24:11
  historical name for it, and it's completely unbiblical.
• 24:13
  So the proper Orthodox definition is this.
• 24:16
  God is one. In essence.
• 24:18
  The Greek word is Lucia, but he exists as 3 distinct persons or
• 24:24
  subsistences. The German word drying kite
• 24:27
  actually captures it really well.
• 24:29
  Three Oneness. OK, but is this something the
• 24:31
  church just invented centuries later, or is it actually in the
• 24:35
  text of the Bible? Oh, it is woven into the text
• 24:37
  from the very beginning in the Old Testament.
• 24:39
  You get these strong hands. We already mentioned Genesis 1
• 24:42
  where the plural noun Elohim is used.
• 24:44
  And then God says, let us make man in our image.
• 24:48
  Who is the use and the our in that sentence?
• 24:51
  Or Isaiah 48 point between scene where you have the sender, the
• 24:54
  Messiah and the Spirit all mentioned one verse.
• 24:57
  And then in the New Testament, it's like the lights come on
• 24:59
  fully. The baptism of Jesus is the
• 25:01
  definitive scene. You have the sun standing in the
• 25:04
  water of the Jordan River. You have the Father speaking
• 25:06
  from heaven. This is my beloved Son, and you
• 25:09
  have the Holy Spirit descending like a dove.
• 25:12
  All three persons are present at the same time.
• 25:14
  They're distinct from one another, yet they are one God.
• 25:17
  If modalism were true, that scene would be absurd.
• 25:19
  Jesus would have to be a ventriloquist, throwing his
• 25:22
  voice up to heaven while standing in the water.
• 25:24
  Exactly. It makes a complete mockery of
• 25:26
  the scene. The Father is not the Son.
• 25:28
  The Son is not the Spirit. Ends points out that we need to
• 25:31
  clarify some of these difficult terms that anti Trinitarians
• 25:34
  like say Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons often used to attack the
• 25:38
  deity of Christ, for example the word begotten.
• 25:41
  Right. They will argue that begotten
• 25:43
  means birthed or created. But in its proper theological
• 25:47
  context, begotten refers to the Son's relationship to the
• 25:51
  Father, not His origin. It often refers to his public
• 25:54
  declaration of sonship. Psalm 2.7 says You are my Son.
• 25:59
  Today I have begotten you. And how is it used in the New
• 26:01
  Testament? The book of Acts chapter 13
• 26:04
  applies that very verse to the resurrection of Jesus.
• 26:07
  It wasn't the day that Jesus was created, it was the day he was
• 26:10
  publicly declared to be the Son of God in.
• 26:12
  Power. OK, what about first born
• 26:14
  Colossians? One calls Jesus the first born
• 26:17
  of all creation. That really, really sounds like
• 26:20
  he was the first thing God made. It does to our modern ears,
• 26:23
  because we almost exclusively associate first born with birth
• 26:26
  order. But in the biblical culture,
• 26:28
  first born, the Greek word prototochos was a title of rank,
• 26:33
  of privilege, and of inheritance.
• 26:35
  Can you give an example of? That look at King David, he was
• 26:38
  the youngest son of Jesse. He was the baby of the family.
• 26:41
  Yet in Psalm 89 God says of David, I will make him my first
• 26:45
  born, the highest of the kings of the earth.
• 26:47
  David didn't change his birth date, he was given a change in
• 26:50
  his rank. So calling Jesus the first born
• 26:53
  means he is the heir of all things, the king, the one with
• 26:55
  preeminence over all creation. It doesn't mean he is a part of
• 26:59
  creation. And only begotten the word Mana
• 27:01
  Jeans. That means unique or
• 27:03
  one-of-a-kind. It's used to clarify that Jesus
• 27:07
  is the Son of God by nature. We as believers are sons and
• 27:10
  daughters of God. By adoption, He's in a category
• 27:13
  all by himself. So we've established who God is,
• 27:16
  His attributes, His names, His triune nature.
• 27:19
  Now, sticking with our Reformed thinking theme, we have to talk
• 27:22
  about how He governs the universe.
• 27:25
  Section 6. The decrees of God.
• 27:28
  This is really the backbone of the Reformed worldview.
• 27:30
  If the attributes are The Who of God, the decrees are the How of
• 27:33
  God. We look to the Westminster
• 27:36
  Shorter Confession, Question 7. It defines the decrees of God as
• 27:39
  His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will,
• 27:42
  whereby for His own glory He hath foreordained whatsoever
• 27:45
  comes to pass. Whatsoever comes to pass, that
• 27:46
  is a very inclusive phrase. It leaves absolutely nothing
• 27:49
  out. It's a single, wise, eternal
• 27:51
  plan. It covers the movement of
• 27:52
  galaxies, the rise and fall of nations, and the number of hairs
• 27:55
  on your head. This establishes God's absolute
• 27:58
  sovereignty. He's not reacting to history.
• 28:01
  He's the one who wrote history. But this is where the pushback
• 28:03
  comes, and it's a fair question. If God ordains everything,
• 28:07
  aren't we just robots? What happens to human
• 28:09
  responsibility? If God wrote the whole script,
• 28:12
  how can I be blamed for my lines?
• 28:14
  And this brings us to a vital theological term, antinomy.
• 28:18
  Define that for us. And antinomy is the combination
• 28:21
  of two truths that appear to be contradictory to our limited
• 28:25
  human reason, but are perfectly reconcilable in the mind of God.
• 28:29
  It is not a contradiction. A contradiction is a lie.
• 28:32
  An antinomy is a paradox that we can't fully grasp from our
• 28:36
  perspective. And the core antinomy here is.
• 28:38
  God is absolutely sovereign and man is fully responsible.
• 28:41
  We naturally want to pick one side of that, don't we?
• 28:44
  We want to say, well, God does it all, so I'm just passive or I
• 28:46
  have free will, so God must just be watching what happens.
• 28:49
  But the Bible refuses to let us resolve that tension.
• 28:53
  It demands that we hold both truths at the same time.
• 28:57
  Look at Acts chapter 2, verse 23.
• 28:59
  Peter is preaching his first sermon about the crucifixion of
• 29:01
  Jesus. He says clearly that Jesus was
• 29:04
  handed over to be crucified by God's set purpose and
• 29:06
  foreknowledge. So the cross was God's sovereign
• 29:09
  plan. It wasn't an accident or a
• 29:11
  tragedy that God didn't see coming.
• 29:13
  It was God's decree from eternity past.
• 29:16
  But in the very next breath, Peter points to the crowd and
• 29:19
  says, And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death.
• 29:23
  He holds them fully responsible for their sinful actions.
• 29:26
  They weren't puppets. No, they did exactly what they
• 29:30
  wanted to do. They acted according to their
• 29:32
  own wicked desires. God ordained the event for our
• 29:35
  salvation, but the men who carried it out were fully
• 29:38
  responsible for their evil motives.
• 29:40
  Or you look at a prophet like Habakkuk.
• 29:42
  God tells him he is raising up the Babylonians to judge Israel.
• 29:46
  He ordains their invasion, but then a chapter later God says he
• 29:50
  will judge the Babylonians for being so violent.
• 29:53
  It seems unfair to our limited logic, but it is a consistent
• 29:56
  pattern in Scripture. To help us understand this,
• 29:58
  theologians often distinguish between God's directive will and
• 30:01
  his permissive will. How does that distinction work?
• 30:04
  God is the direct author of all that is good.
• 30:08
  He directly brings about creation, righteousness, and
• 30:11
  salvation, but He is not the author of sin.
• 30:14
  James chapter 1 says that God cannot be tempted by evil, nor
• 30:18
  does he tempt anyone. So sinful acts fall within the
• 30:21
  scope of the decree. They are part of the plan, but
• 30:24
  they are permissive. Yes, God permits the Sinner to
• 30:27
  act according to his own fallen nature.
• 30:29
  He doesn't force a good man to be bad.
• 30:31
  He simply withdraws his restraining grace and allows the
• 30:34
  wicked heart to do what it naturally wants to do.
• 30:37
  And in His infinite wisdom, he then uses those very sinful acts
• 30:41
  to accomplish his own holy purpose.
• 30:43
  The ultimate example of that has to be the story of Joseph.
• 30:46
  You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
• 30:48
  That's it. Exactly 1 event, two different
• 30:51
  intentions behind it. The brothers intended evil.
• 30:54
  God intended salvation. For many, both statements are
• 30:56
  true. You know, that's actually a
• 30:58
  deeply comforting doctrine. It's the only truly comforting
• 31:00
  doctrine there is. If world events were just
• 31:02
  random, or if the future depended entirely on the whims
• 31:05
  of crazy dictators and fallen human beings, we would have
• 31:08
  every reason to be terrified. But knowing that God is
• 31:11
  ordained, whatsoever comes to pass destroys our pride, and it
• 31:15
  offers a deep peace. The world is not spinning out of
• 31:19
  control, It is spinning exactly according to His good and
• 31:23
  perfect decree. Now, not everyone likes that
• 31:25
  idea, and in recent years there's been a pretty
• 31:28
  significant challenge to this classical view of God's
• 31:32
  sovereignty. Section 7.
• 31:34
  Openness Theology. This is a modern movement really
• 31:37
  originating with theologians like Clark Pinnick, Richard Rice
• 31:39
  and John Sanders. Their starting point is very
• 31:42
  different. They begin with the idea that
• 31:44
  for God to have a truly loving relationship with human beings,
• 31:47
  man must have what they call libertarian freedom.
• 31:50
  And libertarian freedom means what?
• 31:52
  Total independence of choice? It means the.
• 31:54
  Ability to choose A or B without any prior cause or divine
• 31:58
  determination. They argue that if man is free
• 32:01
  in this way, then the future must be genuinely open and
• 32:04
  therefore God cannot know the future free actions of his
• 32:08
  creatures. So they are actually saying that
• 32:09
  God does not know what I'm going to do tomorrow.
• 32:12
  That is correct. They claim the future doesn't
• 32:14
  exist yet, so not even God can know it for sure.
• 32:17
  They say that God takes risks. He changes his mind when we
• 32:20
  surprise him. He learns as history unfolds.
• 32:24
  They think this makes God more relatable, more personal, more
• 32:27
  like us. But ends and the whole reformed
• 32:30
  tradition pushes back very hard on this.
• 32:32
  Why is this view considered so dangerous?
• 32:35
  Because the cost of adopting it is incredibly high.
• 32:38
  First and foremost, it completely undermines the
• 32:40
  inerrancy of Scripture. If God doesn't know the future,
• 32:44
  then all of biblical prophecy is just a good guess.
• 32:47
  Take the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.
• 32:49
  Exactly. Jesus predicted that Judas would
• 32:51
  betray him. If openness theology is true,
• 32:54
  then Judas had total free will and God couldn't possibly know
• 32:57
  for sure what he would do. So was Jesus just playing the
• 33:00
  odds? Was it just a good guess that
• 33:02
  completely destroys the authority of scripture?
• 33:04
  And it also seems to attack the very attributes of God we just
• 33:07
  spent all that time discussing. It does.
• 33:10
  It directly denies his omissions.
• 33:12
  He doesn't know everything, and it denies his immutability.
• 33:16
  He is constantly changing his plans based on the surprises we
• 33:19
  throw at him. Anne's argues that the openness
• 33:23
  theists fundamentally misinterpret Scripture.
• 33:25
  When the Bible says God repented or was sorry that he made man,
• 33:30
  those are anthropomorphisms. Just like the hands and eyes of
• 33:33
  God. Yes, they are figures of speech
• 33:35
  to help us understand God's disposition towards sin or a
• 33:39
  change in His administration toward people.
• 33:41
  They are not literal statements that God realized he made a
• 33:44
  mistake and now he has to scramble to come up with a Plan
• 33:47
  B. The source material is pretty
• 33:48
  blunt about this. It says that openness theology
• 33:51
  essentially dethrones God. It does.
• 33:53
  It makes man the sovereign decider of history and God
• 33:56
  becomes the reactive cleanup crew who is always trying to
• 33:59
  make the best of a bad situation.
• 34:01
  And reason is a massive trust factor issue.
• 34:04
  Can you really trust a God who worries?
• 34:06
  Can you trust a God who says well I hope this all works out
• 34:08
  but I'm taking a huge risk here. That is not the God of the Bible
• 34:11
  who declares the end from the beginning.
• 34:13
  No. A God who learns is a God who is
• 34:16
  incomplete, and a God who is incomplete is not God at all.
• 34:21
  It really seems like openness theology relies a lot on how we
• 34:25
  feel. You know our own intuition that
• 34:27
  we are totally free, rather than what the text of Scripture
• 34:30
  actually says about God's sovereign control.
• 34:32
  That is the very crux of it. We must shape our view of God by
• 34:36
  what Scripture reveals, not by our human desire for complete
• 34:40
  autonomy. We have covered a massive amount
• 34:43
  of ground today. I mean from the Watchmaker
• 34:45
  argument for his existence to the majesty of the I Am, to the
• 34:48
  mystery of the Trinity and the solid rock of the decrees.
• 34:52
  It's been a full tour. We went from the evidence of His
• 34:55
  hands and creation to the secrets of His heart in His
• 34:57
  eternal decrees. We started with the basic
• 35:00
  question of His existence, and we ended with the deep assurance
• 35:03
  of His sovereignty over everything.
• 35:05
  And I think that brings us right back to that word you introduced
• 35:07
  earlier, antinomy. It feels like that's the key to
• 35:10
  keeping your sanity when you study theology.
• 35:12
  It really is. We have to be willing to let God
• 35:16
  be God. We are responsible creatures.
• 35:18
  We make real choices that have real, eternal consequences, and
• 35:22
  yet at the same time, we are held securely in the hands of a
• 35:25
  God who ordained all of our days before one of them ever came to
• 35:28
  be. That's a tension for sure, but
• 35:31
  it's a beautiful tension. It is.
• 35:32
  It's the tension of a small child holding their father's
• 35:35
  hand. The child walks, but the father
• 35:37
  leads. The child is active, but the
• 35:39
  father is sovereign over the journey.
• 35:41
  I want to leave the listener with a thought to chew on.
• 35:44
  We talked about God's decrees and our responsibility.
• 35:46
  If God has ordained everything, including not just the ends but
• 35:49
  also the means, how does that change the way you pray today?
• 35:53
  If he's not waiting on you to surprise him with new
• 35:55
  information, but he's instead inviting you to participate in
• 35:58
  his unfolding plan, that changes the whole conversation, doesn't
• 36:02
  it? Indeed it does.
• 36:03
  It turns prayer from informing God into aligning with God.
• 36:06
  It turns anxiety into trust. Thanks for jumping in with us on
• 36:10
  Reformed thinking. Hopefully your definition of
• 36:12
  reality just got a little sharper.
• 36:14
  We will see you next time.