Latest / Reformed Thinking / One God, Three Persons: The Trinity Revealed in Scripture | John Calvin

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One God, Three Persons: The Trinity Revealed in Scripture | John Calvin · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. You know, usually when we talk
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about a medical diagnosis, there is this expectation of, well,
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absolute precision. Right.
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Yeah, You want it to be very clear.
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Yeah, you break your arm. The X-ray shows that jagged
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white line on the black film, and the doctor points at it and
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says, you know, there it is. That is the problem.
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Which is comforting. I mean, we like things to be
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visible. We like them to be categorized.
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We really do. We want things to fit neatly
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into our understanding of the physical universe.
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But then, then you step into the world of theology.
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Oh yeah. Specifically into the nature of
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God himself, yeah. And suddenly that X-ray machine
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is broken. We are looking at a conceptual
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landscape that is honestly pretty murky for our physical
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brains to process. It is a huge shift.
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You cannot just point to a film and say there is the divine
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essence. Right.
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And I'm so glad you decided to join us today.
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For this custom tailored deep dive, we are looking at John
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Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, specifically
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the sections covering the triune nature of God as taught from
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creation onward. It is such a massive topic.
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I mean, it covers so much ground.
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It really does. So the mission for our
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conversation today is to unpack how these ancient texts
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established the single essence of God subsisting in three
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distinct persons. And we also need to talk about
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why the language we use for this matters immensely.
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Absolutely. And we want to help you spot
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historical errors that while they still circulate in modern
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conversations today. OK, let's unpack this.
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How do we even begin to talk about a God whose nature is, by
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definition, immeasurable? Well, Calvin asserts right at
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the beginning that God's infinite and spiritual nature
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should completely stop humans from using earthly imagination
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to measure Him. So we basically need to hit the
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brakes on our own brains. Precisely that is the necessary
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starting point for anyone trying to understand this topic.
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Calvin argues that God speaks sparingly of his own essence to
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keep us sober to. Keep us sober.
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I like that. Meaning keeping us from getting
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drunk on our own wild theories. Yeah, you know those two
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specific descriptors you mentioned?
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Infinite and spiritual? They are meant to banish foolish
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imaginings and restrain the boldness of the human mind.
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Because if we do not restrain it, we just invent things.
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Right. Think about the implications.
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If God is infinite, we should be terrified to try to measure him
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by our own 5 senses. Yeah, our senses are just way
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too small for that. And if he is spiritual, well, it
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forbids us from imagining anything earthly or carnal about
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him. When the human mind ignores
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those boundaries, terrible theological errors emerge.
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And Calvin mentions 2 historical examples of what happens when we
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try to force God into our limited boxes.
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He talks about the Maniches and the anthropomorphites.
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Yeah, those are two very distinct, very dangerous errors.
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Let us break those down for the listener, because the names
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sound ancient, but the thought processes behind them are
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incredibly common. What was the specific error of
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the Maniches? So the Maniches, they postulated
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2 competing origins or principles in the universe.
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Like a good side and a bad side. Basically, yeah.
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They believed in a dualistic cosmos where the devil was
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almost equal to God. They imagined a good force and
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an evil force battling it out on a cosmic chess board.
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Wow. OK, so why is that so dangerous?
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Well, Calvin points out that this idea completely wrecks the
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unity of God and restricts his Infinity.
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I see, because if God has a rival who operates on an equal
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level, God is no longer infinite.
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Spot on. His domain is limited by the
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existence of this other equal force.
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Calvin says that daring to abuse certain testimonies of Scripture
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to support this dualism was due to base ignorance.
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He does not hold back with his words, does he?
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Not at all, he says. The error itself sprang from
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exegetable madness. They wanted to solve the problem
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of evil by making the devil a rival God, but in doing so they
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destroyed the very definition of who God is.
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That makes tremendous logical sense.
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If God is infinite, there cannot be a second infinite force
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pushing back against Him. Two infinities cannot occupy the
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same reality and competition. Right, it is a mathematical
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impossibility, little on a theological 1.
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Now I am looking at this section on the anthropomorphites and
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honestly I kind of get their confusion.
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It is a very human mistake to make.
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I mean, if the Bible literally says God's hand is at work or
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his eyes are roaming the earth, is it not completely natural for
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a human to imagine a giant man in the sky?
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Why is Calvin so furious about them taking the text literally?
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It it's an understandable human instinct, sure, but it is a
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catastrophic theological error. Because they took metaphors and
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made them literal anatomy. Exactly.
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The anthropomorphites took those literal descriptions in
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scripture of God having eyes, ears, hands, or feet to mean
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that he actually possesses a physical, corporeal body.
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Unless they just pictured a really big human, yeah.
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They imagined a physical God because they could not grasp the
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concept of a purely spiritual essence.
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Their brains needed a shape to hold onto.
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Which goes back to what we were saying about trying to measure
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the infinite with our senses. Right.
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But Calvin provides a brilliant refutation of this by explaining
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the method God uses to communicate with us.
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He points out that God does not speak to us in the language of
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heaven because we would never understand it.
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Yes, Kelvin brings up a fascinating analogy here, and it
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is something you will immediately recognize if you
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have ever been around young children.
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The baby talk analogy. It is so good.
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It really is. He says that anyone with even
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slight intelligence should understand that God is doing
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something very specific when he talks about his hands or his
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eyes. It is like a parent using baby
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talk. You do not hand a toddler a
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textbook on anatomy. Right.
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When you speak to a toddler, you do not use complex anatomical
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terms or abstract philosophy. You point at a dog and say Bow
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Wow. You use terms the child can
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grasp. You accommodate their tiny
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vocabulary, yes. You accommodate them, and Calvin
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suggests that Scripture does this very thing when it talks
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about God's hands and mouth. The precise analogy used in the
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text is a nurse with an infant. God lisps in speaking to us.
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He. Lisps, that is such a vivid word
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picture. It is he descends far beneath
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his own loftiness, just so we can grasp a tiny fraction of his
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reality. So those physical descriptions
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are not actually what God looks like.
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No, those forms of speaking describing God with hands or a
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mouth, they do not accurately express what God is actually
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like in his infinite essence. Instead, they accommodate the
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knowledge of Him to our slight, sluggish human capacity.
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Because our slow minds naturally sink down to the earth, God
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raises us above the world by speaking to us in a way we can
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digest. He uses physical metaphors to
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describe spiritual realities. I really appreciate that
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concept. God lisps to us, but that
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presents a massive challenge for us as readers, does it not?
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Oh. Absolutely.
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It creates A tension we have to work through.
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Right, because since our human capacity is so small,
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determining the right words to describe God's internal nature
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becomes an immense struggle. If God's essence is beyond our
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vocabulary, how do we talk about the internal relationships
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within God? And that leads directly to the
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historical debates over the word Trinity.
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That is the logical next step in Calvin's argument, is it not?
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It is God designates himself by a special mark to distinguish
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himself from idols. He proclaims himself the soul
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God, but he offers himself to be contemplated clearly in three
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persons. And we have to hold both of
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those truths together. We do.
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Calvin argues that unless we grasp these three persons, only
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the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains,
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excluding the true God. But there is a danger there,
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right? The danger of splitting God up
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into pieces, yes. To keep us from imagining that
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God is threefold in a way that tears his simple essence into
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three pieces, the ancient church had to seek a short, easy
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definition to free believers from error.
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And this is where the controversy really starts.
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I want to take the perspective of a skeptic here for a moment,
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because Calvin addresses this directly.
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It is a very common objection even today.
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Why should we use words fashioned by the human mind?
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Words like Trinity or person or subsistence do not appear
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syllable by syllable in Scripture.
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Right, people say just read the Bible.
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Yeah, Does introducing foreign extra biblical vocabulary not
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just cause strife and bickering? Why not stick strictly to the
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vocabulary found in the Bible to avoid hateful wrangling?
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What's fascinating here is the historical necessity that drove
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the church to adopt those extra biblical terms.
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So they did not just invent them because they wanted to be
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academic. Not at all.
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Calvin calls those who demand only syllable by syllable
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biblical words squeamish men who impose an unjust law.
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Squeamish men. He really had a way with
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insults. He did.
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Now, if a foreign word is used fruitlessly or detracts from the
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simplicity of the word, Calvin completely agrees we should
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reject. It so he is not just for making
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up words for the fun of it, no. But what if a word explains
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matters that perplex our understanding, yet
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conscientiously and faithfully protects the truth of Scripture?
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Then it is a useful tool. Exactly.
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The Church was utterly compelled to make use of words like
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Trinity and Person to unmask false teachers.
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The slippery snakes. Yes, Calvin literally calls them
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slippery snakes who glide away unless they're boldly pursued,
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caught, and crushed. That is quite the visual.
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It is. Let us look at the specific
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historical villains mentioned who made this new vocabulary
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necessary. The first one is Arias.
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Explain how Aries operated, because it sounds like he was
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incredibly deceptive. He was Arias was a master of
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versatile craftiness. Craftiness is a good word for
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it. Because he could not openly
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oppose the manifest oracles of Scripture without losing his
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audience, Arius would publicly confess that Christ was God and
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the Son of God. So he would stand up in church
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and say, yes, Jesus is God. He would.
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He pretended to agree with Orthodox Christians.
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He would nod his head and sign the parchment.
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Wow. Yet in the meantime, he would
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secretly teach his followers that Christ was created and had
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a beginning, just like other created beings.
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So he was redefining the word God, Yes.
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Arius would use the biblical word God to describe Jesus, but
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he meant it in a secondary created sense.
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So if the church only used the biblical word God, Arius could
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hide forever. He could sign a statement of
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faith while completely denying the eternal deity of Christ.
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Right, he was using their own words against them.
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How did the early church drag his craftiness out of its hiding
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place? They had to build a trap, right?
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Precisely. They went further and introduced
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a specific word to act as a linguistic trap.
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That word was homousios. Homousios which translates to
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what? It translates to consubstantial
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or of the same substance. OK, so of the same substance,
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how did that trap? Him Well, the ancient teachers
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declared Christ the eternal Son of the Father, consubstantial
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with the Father. And when they did that, the
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impiety of the Aryans boiled over.
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They could not agree to that word.
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No, they wickedly hated and cursed the word homousios.
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As Calvin points out, if they had sincerely believed Christ
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was God, they would not have denied he was consubstantial
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with a Father. That one single word fleshed out
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their true beliefs and marked the clear distinction between
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pure faith and the sacrilegious Aryans.
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It was a. Brilliant necessary move.
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That makes so much sense. It forces the person to explain
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what they mean when they use biblical vocabulary.
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Because you cannot hide behind the word God if you were forced
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to affirm that Jesus shares the exact same uncreated substance
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as the Father. And Arius was not the only
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slippery snake. Calvin also brings up Sibelius.
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What was his specific error? So Sibelius argued that the
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names Father, Son and Holy Spirit were of almost no value
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in terms of distinction. You.
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Just mush them all together. Basically, yeah, he claimed.
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They were simply diverse attributes of God.
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If he came to a debate, Sebelius would readily confess that he
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recognized the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit
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as God. Again, using the right words,
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but meaning something else. Right, he meant it.
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In the same way you might call God strong and just and wise.
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He taught that the Father is the Son and the Holy Spirit is the
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Father, without any rank or distinction.
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He treated the persons like masks that God wears depending
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on the situation. Today God is wearing the Creator
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mask, tomorrow the Redeemer mask.
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That is a very accurate way to describe his heresy to.
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Shatter that wickedness. The upright doctors of the
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church affirm that a Trinity of persons subsists in the one God.
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This establishes the very specific definition of person
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that Calvin relies on. Which is very different from how
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we use the word today. Yeah.
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How does he define a person in this context?
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Because he is not using the word the way we use it today to
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describe a human individual walking down the street.
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No, He is using it in a highly technical, theological sense.
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A person or subsistence is defined as a reality residing in
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God's essence that relates to the others but possesses an
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incommunicable distinguishing quality.
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An incommunicable quality. That is a heavy phrase.
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Calvin notes that subsistence is different from essence.
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For instance, when the apostle John says the word was always
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with God, he refers to a subsistence.
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Because you cannot be with someone if you are just the
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exact same entity with no distinction.
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Spot on. The Word could not be with God
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without residing in the Father. This shows a common bond of
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essence, but also a special mark whereby the Word is
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distinguished from the Father. And that special mark is what he
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means by incommunicable. Yes, whatever is proper to each
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individually is incommunicable. When the text says these traits
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are incommunicable, think of it like a fingerprint.
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You might share your eye color or your height with your
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siblings. Yeah, that is a good analogy.
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That is the shared essence of your family genetics.
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But your fingerprint, you cannot transfer that.
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It is entirely unique to you it. Distinguishes you from the rest
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of the family. That is what makes you a
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distinct person within the family.
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You cannot transfer the distinguishing mark of the
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father to the son. Right.
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And if we have established that these specific terms, Trinity,
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Person, consubstantial, are necessary to protect the truths
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from slippery snakes, we must next look at the Scriptures.
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Yes, we need to look at how Scripture specifically defends
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the eternal, uncreated nature of the second person, the Son.
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Because Calvin dies intensely into the eternal deity of the
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Word, he makes a sharp distinction between a spoken
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utterance and the everlasting wisdom.
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Yes, Calvin warns that it would be the height of absurdity to
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imagine God's Word as a fleeting, vanishing utterance
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cast into the air that projects itself outside of God.
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Because that is how human words work.
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They vibrate and vanish. Right.
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But when we speak of the Word, we mean the everlasting wisdom
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residing with God. This word possessed a solid
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abiding essence before time began.
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And Calvin points to the Genesis 1 creation account to prove
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this. When God said let this or that
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be done, He was setting forth this word as the intermediary,
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the. Word was the agent of creation.
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Yes, the active agent. I can hear the objection forming
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in the listener's mind because Calvin brings up this very
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counter argument. Some critics try to get around
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this by arguing that the word was just a bidding.
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A command basically. Yeah, a temporary volition of
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God, because a word does not exist until it is spoken.
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Right? But Calvin uses the apostles as
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better interpreter. He always goes back to the
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Apostolic witness. He does.
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In Hebrews it says the world was made through the sun and John
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1.1 is the ultimate proof text. Here the Word was God from the
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beginning, sharing a solid and abiding essence with the Father.
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But there is a very specific, subtle objection raised in the
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text by those who want to secretly filter away Christ's
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eternity while pretending to respect his divinity.
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This is a tricky 1. It is, they argue, that the Word
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first began to exist at the very moment God opened his mouth at
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the creation of the universe. So they tie the beginning of the
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word to the beginning of time? Yes.
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They claim that when Moses says God spoke for the first time in
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Genesis 1, it implies there was no word residing in God before
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that moment. How does Calvin dismantle that
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argument? Because on a surface reading of
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human language, one might think, well, a spoken word literally
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does not exist until the vocal cords vibrate.
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Galvin calls that reasoning too reckless because it invents a
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sort of innovation in God's substance.
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And innovation, meaning God, changed.
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Exactly. It suggests God evolved or
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developed a new trait. The rule of piety is that we
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cannot recognize any idea which intimates that something new has
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happened to God in Himself. Because God is immutable, he
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does not change. Right.
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Nothing is added to his internal reality.
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As the Apostle James writes with the Father of lights, there is
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no variation or shadow of change.
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Therefore, it is intolerable to fancy a beginning for the Word.
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The word existed long before God said, Let there be light.
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The might of the Word emerged and stood forth at creation, but
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his existence had no beginning. He was conceived beyond the
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beginning of time by God, and has perpetually resided with
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Him. To illustrate this eternal pre
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existence, Calvin looks at Old Testament proofs.
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He focuses intensely on the appearances of the Angel of the
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Eternal God. This is one of the most
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fascinating parts of his argument.
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It really is. Here is the aha moment for you
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as a listener. The next time you read about
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Jacob wrestling in the dirt or Manoa making a sacrifice in the
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Book of Judges, you are not reading about a created Angel
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with wings. No, you are not.
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You are reading a cameo appearance of the pre Incarnate
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Jesus stepping into time before Bethlehem.
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Let us talk about Manoah and his wife in Judges 13.
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So in the story of Manoah, an Angel appears to them.
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Now if this were simply a created servant of heaven, he
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would never permit a sacrifice to be offered to himself.
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Because that would be idolatry. Right, it would deprive God of
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his honor. Created angels in Scripture
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always violently reject worship they tell people to get.
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Up. But this Angel acts differently.
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Very differently, this Angel refuses to eat bread and
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commands that a sacrifice be offered to Jehovah.
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The fact that the sacrifice is accepted in His presence prompts
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Manoah to realize the truth. Manoah realizes he is not just
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dealing with a messenger. He.
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Exclaims We shall die because we have seen God.
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And his wife has a great response to them.
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She does. She replies that if Jehovah had
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willed them to die, he would not have received the offering.
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She confesses that the one previously called an Angel is
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truly God. And the angel's own reply
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removes all doubt when he asks. Why do you ask concerning my
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name? Which is wonderful.
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That specific word is a massive clue.
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It points directly to the messianic prophecy in Isaiah
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about his name being called wonderful counselor.
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The same thing happens with Jacob wrestling in Genesis 32.
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Jacob says I have seen God face to face.
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Calvin points out that Orthodox teachers view this chief Angel
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as God's Word, acting as a sort of foretaste of the mediator
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role. Jesus was already acting as the
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go between even back then. That is the theological crux of
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those Old Testament appearances. Even though he was not yet
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clothed with human flesh, the Word came down as an
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intermediary to approach believers more intimately.
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He was getting close to his people.
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Yes, this closer intercourse gave him the name of Angel, but
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he retained his full uncreated deity.
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And Calvin brings this up specifically to discredit a
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massive claim made by the heretic Michael Cerveidis.
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What was Cervidis claiming? Cervidis asserted that God was
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never revealed to Abraham and the other patriarchs, and that
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they only ever worshipped a created Angel.
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Oh, so he tried to cut the patriarchs off from true
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worship. He did, but the Orthodox view
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thoroughly crushes that idea. It was the eternal Word,
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stepping down into the human sphere, preparing humanity for
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the eventual incarnation. While the Old Testament provides
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these striking, shadowy appearances of the word, the New
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Testament writers take these ancient Jehovah texts and
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shockingly apply them directly to Jesus of Nazareth.
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The. Apostles are really the key to
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unlocking this whole thing. This is where it gets really
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interesting for you to consider. The apostles did not just invent
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the idea of Christ's deity out of thin air.
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They proved it by pointing backward to the established
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scriptures. Calvin walks us through the
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specific Apostolic citations to demonstrate this.
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Paul takes Isaiah 8, which talks about the Lord of hosts being a
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stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
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And he applies that to Jesus. He does.
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He declares his prophecy fulfilled in Christ.
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In Romans 9, Paul proclaims Christ to be the Lord of hosts.
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That is a massive theological statement for a Jewish scholar
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like Paul to make. It is huge and we see the same
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pattern in John's Gospel. John testifies that it was the
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glory of the sun which had been revealed through Isaiah's famous
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temple vision in Isaiah chapter 6.
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Even though Isaiah explicitly writes that he saw the majesty
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of God filling the temple. Right, John says.
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No, that was Jesus he saw. The writers of the New Testament
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take the most glorious titles of God, the one who founded heaven
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and earth, the one the angels adore, and confer them upon the
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sun. And Kelvin notes that Paul says
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we must all stand once before the judgment seat of Christ, and
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follows it by quoting Isaiah 45. To me every knee shall bow.
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Since God foretells this concerning Himself and Isaiah,
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and Christ shows it forth in himself, it logically follows
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that Christ is that very God whose glory cannot be
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transferred to another. The logic is just airtight.
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Furthermore, Calvin evaluates Christ's divinity by the actions
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he performed. Because his actions were not
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just human actions. Not at all.
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To govern the universe with Providence.
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To regulate all things by the command of His own might.
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These are functions of the Creator alone, but Calvin
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highlights specific works that cannot possibly be communicated
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to a created being. Here is where it gets incredibly
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practical. Think about the act of forgiving
21:44
sins. That is a huge one.
21:46
If a human walks up to you and claims to forgive your sins
21:48
against heaven, it is intensely offensive.
21:51
It sounds like absolute blasphemy.
21:53
The Pharisees were right to be outraged if Jesus was just a
21:56
man. They understood the implications
21:58
of what he was saying. Right.
21:59
But Christ not only claimed this ability, he proved it with
22:02
physical miracles. Calvin quotes Isaiah 43 where
22:05
the Lord proclaims I, even I and the one who blots out your
22:10
transgressions for my own sake. So God claims exclusive rights
22:14
to forgiveness. Yes, when the Jews thought wrong
22:17
was done to God because Christ was remitting sins, Christ
22:21
proved by a physical miracle healing the paralytic that this
22:24
actual ability belonged to him. He backed up the spiritual claim
22:28
with physical evidence. He possesses not simply the
22:31
administration, but the actual authority of remission of sins
22:34
which the Lord says will never pass from Him to another.
22:37
Another incommunicable work is knowing the silent thoughts of
22:40
human hearts. The penetrating of silent
22:42
thoughts belongs to God alone. Yet Christ had this ability.
22:46
He answered the thoughts of the Pharisees before they even
22:48
spoke. And then there's the concept of
22:50
salvation itself. Calvin states that no one is
22:52
good except God, and apart from God there is no salvation, no
22:55
righteousness, no life. Yet Christ contains all these in
22:58
himself. We cannot say life and salvation
23:01
were infused into Christ by God. Because Christ is not said to
23:04
have received salvation, He is salvation itself.
23:07
He is the author of Life. To trust a created being for
23:11
salvation is a sacrilegious impiety.
23:14
Therefore, Jesus must be uncreated.
23:17
That leads directly to the act of prayer, which is the ultimate
23:20
test of worship. We are commanded in Joel 2.32 to
23:23
call upon the name of Jehovah for salvation.
23:26
Yet we see Stephen in Acts 7 as he is being martyred.
23:29
Praying. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
23:32
And Ananias talks about the Saints who call upon the name of
23:34
Christ. If the name of Christ is invoked
23:37
for salvation, and the Old Testament explicitly demands we
23:39
call upon Jehovah alone, what is the conclusion?
23:43
The inescapable conclusion is that Christ is Jehovah.
23:46
The prayer that depends upon faith is due to Christ, and this
23:50
specially belongs to the divine majesty.
23:52
Having established the undeniable deity of the Word
23:55
through his eternal existence, the Old Testament appearances,
23:57
the Apostolic witness and His incommunicable works, we have to
24:01
move. Forward.
24:01
Yes, because there's a whole other person we have to look at.
24:04
Calvin points out that the exact same rigorous scriptural
24:07
standard must be applied to the third person of the Trinity, the
24:10
Holy Spirit. We have to look for the energy
24:12
and deity of the Spirit. Calvin directs us right back to
24:15
the beginning, to Genesis 1.2. The Spirit of God was spread
24:19
over the deeps or the formless matter.
24:22
So the Spirit was active right from the start.
24:25
This shows that before the adornment of the universe was
24:27
added, the spirit was occupied with tending that confused
24:31
chaotic mass. The beauty of the universe we
24:34
now perceive owes its strength and preservation to the active
24:38
energy of the Spirit. And Calvin highlights the
24:40
Spirit's current operations as well.
24:42
He's diffused everywhere, sustaining all things, causing
24:45
them to grow, and breathing essence, life and movement into
24:49
them. He is.
24:49
Actively holding everything together.
24:51
But let me push back here on behalf of those who might
24:54
question this Could the spirit just be a force?
24:56
Could the spirit be an attribute of God, like a divine wind or a
25:00
celestial electricity, rather than a distinct divine in
25:03
person? That is very common
25:05
misunderstanding, especially in modern times.
25:08
People like to talk about the universe or an energy.
25:10
Right. Like a vague impersonal power.
25:13
But Calvin refutes it using Paul's teaching.
25:15
In First Corinthians 12, Paul explains that the Spirit
25:18
distributes manifold and varied gifts as he will.
25:21
As he will. That implies choice.
25:25
Calvin notes that choice and will cannot belong to a blind
25:28
force or an impersonal energy. Choice implies A distinct
25:32
conscious entity. Because electricity does not
25:35
decide who gets to turn on a light bulb.
25:37
That is right, because the Spirit apportions all things
25:40
according to his own will. Paul clearly attributes divine
25:44
authority to him and shows that he resides hypostatically in
25:47
God. He resides hypostatically,
25:49
meaning he is a person with agency, not just a battery pack
25:54
of divine energy. Yes, a distinct person.
25:56
That brings up an astonishing argument from Augustine that
25:59
Calvin uses. Augustine formulated what we
26:02
could call the Temple argument. I love this argument, it is so
26:05
concrete. It goes like this.
26:06
If we were commanded to build a physical temple out of wood and
26:09
stone for the spirit, that honor alone would prove his divinity.
26:13
Since temples belong only to God.
26:14
Exactly. No one builds a temple to an
26:16
Angel or a force of nature. But how much more does it prove
26:19
His divinity that we ourselves are the temple of the Holy
26:22
Spirit? It is an airtight logical
26:24
progression. The Apostle Paul writes that we
26:27
are God's temple, and at other times he says we are the temple
26:30
of the Holy Spirit. He uses the terms completely
26:33
interchangeably. Calvin also brings up the
26:35
severity of lying to the Spirit. In Acts 5, Peter rebukes Ananias
26:39
for lying to the Holy Spirit. And he explicitly tells him he
26:43
has not lied to men, but to God. And Ananias drops dead on the
26:47
spot. You cannot lie to a force like
26:49
gravity. You can only lie to a person.
26:52
And to lie to the Spirit is to lie to God himself.
26:55
It is a terrifying story, but it proves the point perfectly.
26:58
And even more severe than lying is the inexpiable crime of
27:02
blaspheming against the Spirit. The unpardonable sin.
27:05
Yes, the Gospels teach that blasphemy against the Sun may
27:09
obtain pardon, but blasphemy against the Spirit is remitted
27:12
neither in this age nor in the age to come.
27:14
Calvin states that this openly declares His divine Majesty.
27:17
To injure or diminish the Spirit is an unpardonable offense.
27:21
It further solidifies His absolute divine majesty, when
27:25
the prophets usually say the words they utter are those of
27:28
the Lord of hosts. Christ and the Apostles refer
27:31
those same words to the Holy Spirit.
27:33
He who is the author of the prophecies is truly Jehovah
27:36
speaking to his people. Now that the sources have
27:38
isolated and defended the deity of the Son and the Spirit, we
27:41
reach the critical question. This is the math of the mystery.
27:44
The math, the mystery. It is where human logic really
27:48
starts to sweat. How do these three relate
27:50
without shattering the unity of the one God?
27:53
We have one God, but three persons.
27:55
How do we distinguish them without dividing the essence
27:58
into thirds? Calvin provides A scriptural
28:00
synthesis of oneness and threeness, starting with the
28:03
baptismal formula in Matthew 28. Point me.
28:06
The Great Commission. Yes, Christ commands the
28:08
apostles to baptize into the name of the Father and of the
28:11
Son and of the Holy Ghost. The grammar there is vital for
28:15
understanding this. We are baptized into one faith,
28:18
into one single name, singular, yet that name is Father, Son and
28:22
Holy Spirit. It means precisely to be
28:26
baptized into the one God who has shown himself with complete
28:29
clarity in these three persons. People often struggle with this
28:33
concept and reach for human analogies to explain the Trinity
28:37
to others. You hear people use the analogy
28:39
of water, ice and steam. Oh, that one comes up all the
28:43
time in Sunday school. Or they talk about the sun, it's
28:45
light and it's heat. Are those helpful tools for us
28:49
to use when we talk to our friends about this?
28:50
Calvin issues a severe warning regarding that practice.
28:54
Ancient men indeed used analogies occasionally, but they
28:58
readily admitted those comparisons were quite
29:00
inadequate. So we should probably avoid
29:01
them. Calvin shrinks from using human
29:04
comparisons because expressing anything inopportunely gives
29:08
occasion either for mockery by the malicious or delusion for
29:11
the ignorant. That makes sense.
29:13
If you use the water, ice and steam analogy, you are actually
29:16
describing the heresy of modalism.
29:18
Right, one substance changing into three different modes over
29:21
time, which we already saw Sebelius promote.
29:23
God is not water that freezes and melts.
29:26
So we must avoid earthly analogies and stick strictly to
29:30
the scriptural distinctions. Calvin provides specific
29:33
relational distinctions to help us understand how the person's
29:36
differ from one another while sharing the exact same essence.
29:40
Yes, the distinction lies in their order and their activity.
29:44
Break that down for us. What is the specific order?
29:46
Calvin explains that to the Father is attributed the
29:50
beginning of activity and the fountain and wellspring of all
29:53
things. So the Father is the fountain.
29:55
Yes, and to the Son is attributed wisdom, counsel, and
29:58
the ordered disposition of all things.
30:01
To the Spirit is assigned the efficacy and energy of that
30:03
activity. So it flows from the Father,
30:06
through the wisdom of the Son, by the energy of the Spirit.
30:09
Right. The observance of this order is
30:10
not meaningless. The human mind naturally
30:12
contemplates God first, then the wisdom coming forth from Him,
30:16
and lastly the energy whereby He executes the decrees of His
30:20
plan. But this order does not mean one
30:22
was created before the other, right?
30:24
Because we must not seek an eternity before or an after time
30:28
did not exist. Right time is a created thing.
30:30
Calvin highlights Augustine's rule to unpack this further.
30:33
Augustine's rule is essential for grasping the relationship.
30:36
He says that the Father is God with respect to Himself, but he
30:40
is Father with respect to the Son.
30:42
It is all about relationships. The Son is God with respect to
30:45
Himself, but He is Son with respect to the Father.
30:48
That is the crux of the orthodox understanding.
30:51
The essence is utterly simple and unified.
30:54
The whole divine nature is understood in each hypothesis.
30:58
So they do not just have a piece of the pie.
30:59
No, the Father is holy in the Son, the Son holy in the Father.
31:03
The distinction lies entirely in their mutual relationships.
31:06
In so far as he is called Father with respect to the Son, he is
31:09
not the Son, but in so far as he is called both Father with
31:12
respect to himself, and Son with respect to himself, he is the
31:16
same God. The simple name of God admits no
31:19
relation, but when we join the Son to the Father, the relation
31:22
of the two enters the picture to distinguish them.
31:25
And whenever humanity tries to push past these careful relation
31:29
based boundaries, disastrous and monstrous errors emerge.
31:34
Calvin shifts into a severe warning against intellectual
31:37
curiosity going beyond the bounds of the Word.
31:40
He calls this wandering into a labyrinth of errors.
31:43
Let us talk about the monsters from the Morass, starting with
31:46
Michael Cervatus. If we connect this to the bigger
31:49
picture of historical theology, Michael Cervatus represents the
31:52
terrifying outcome of an unbridled human mind trying to
31:56
decipher the infinite. He just could not accept what he
31:59
could not mathematically map out.
32:01
Cervatus could not handle the tension of the mystery.
32:04
His human brain needed the math to work on an earthly level.
32:07
So how did he try to solve it? Sevedus viewed the Trinity as an
32:10
imaginary tripartite monster. He claimed that the Persons were
32:14
not actual subsistences residing in God, but just external ideas
32:18
or visible manifestations representing God to us.
32:21
So he. Just turned them into props.
32:22
Pretty much he thought that in the beginning there was no
32:25
distinction, but when Christ came forth, the Spirit proceeded
32:28
as another God. He essentially annihilated the
32:30
eternal deity of both the sun and the spirit by turning them
32:34
into temporary visual aids, but he went even further into what
32:38
Calvin calls execrated territory.
32:40
He really went off the deep. End He horrifically mingled the
32:43
essence of God with created beings.
32:46
Why did he do that? He did it because once you
32:50
unmore yourself from the scriptural boundaries, there is
32:52
no logical stopping point. Servitus publicly declared that
32:56
the spirits of believers are Co eternal and consubstantial with
32:59
God. So he thought we were God too.
33:01
Yes, He assigned A substantial deity to the soul of man, and
33:05
even to other created things like wood and stone.
33:08
By decreeing that God meets out a part of himself according to
33:11
his dispensation, Servatist tore the essence of God into
33:15
divisible parts. He ended up promoting A bizarre
33:18
form of pantheism where everything is a little piece of
33:20
God. That is a wild, blatant heresy.
33:23
But Calvin also brings up a much more subtle modern error.
33:26
Yeah, let's talk about the subtle ones, because those are
33:28
often more dangerous. What about those who say there
33:31
are three persons, but they claim the Father is the only
33:33
true God and that he infused his deity into the Son?
33:36
They call the Father the essence giver.
33:38
This sounds closer to Orthodoxy because they use the right
33:41
words, but Calvin attacks it fiercely.
33:44
He attacks it forcefully because it is an insidious poison.
33:48
Calvin dismantles this by looking at the logical outcome
33:50
of an essence giver. If the Father gives essence to
33:53
the Son, it means the Son's essence is derived, it is
33:57
borrowed. He does not have being from him
34:00
himself. If you say the Son is God, but
34:03
second to the Father in essence, then you're making him a
34:06
secondary figurative God. A God in appearance, in name
34:10
only, not in reality. Right, because if the Father is
34:13
the only one who possesses the essence natively and he hands a
34:16
piece of it to the Son, you either have a divisible essence
34:20
which makes God a physical multi part being, or you strip the Son
34:23
of true deity. The Orthodox view presented in
34:26
the text is that Christ, in respect to His essence, exists.
34:29
Of Himself. His essence is unbegotten, but
34:32
in respect to His Person, He is begotten of the Father.
34:35
That is a massive, vital distinction.
34:37
It is the hinge upon which the truth turns.
34:40
We do not separate the persons from the essence.
34:42
We distinguish among them while they remain within it.
34:44
The essence does not enter into the distinction as a part or a
34:48
member of the Trinity. Therefore, deity in an absolute
34:52
sense exists of itself. The Son, since He is God, exists
34:56
of Himself, but since He is the Son, he exists from the Father.
35:01
The beginning of His Person is God himself, but His essence is
35:05
without beginning. This prompts a common objection
35:07
from those who point to Christ's own words in the Gospel of John.
35:10
Oh yes, Jesus says in John 14 the Father is greater than I.
35:14
Skeptics love to point to that verse.
35:16
How does Calvin clarify that statement without making the Son
35:19
inferior in essence? Calvin clarifies that this
35:22
refers specifically to the person of the mediator.
35:25
When Christ speaks as the mediator, he holds a middle rank
35:29
between God and man. He voluntarily emptied himself
35:32
and took the form of a servant. Right when he says the Father is
35:34
greater, he is not attributing to Himself a secondary deity or
35:38
admitting inferiority and eternal essence.
35:40
What is he doing then? He is comparing the bright
35:42
perfection of splendor that appears in heaven with that
35:45
measure of glory which was seen him when He was clothed with
35:48
flesh. He descended to us, to bear us
35:50
up to the Father. This takes absolutely nothing
35:53
away from His everlasting deity. So what does this all mean for
35:56
you and me today? Synthesizing all of this, the
35:59
sources teach that we must rigorously defend the simple,
36:02
undivided essence of the one God.
36:05
We cannot tolerate any teaching that chops got up into parts or
36:08
makes the Son a created being, but at the exact same time, we
36:12
must equally defend the distinct subsistences of the Father, Son
36:16
and Spirit based on their incommunicable qualities and
36:19
their relationships to one another.
36:21
And we must recognize that these defenses are not new inventions.
36:24
Calvin points out the agreement of the ancient teachers.
36:27
Men like Irenaeus, Tertullian and Augustine.
36:30
Yes, they all defended this precise framework against the
36:33
fanatics of their own times. When modern skeptics try to
36:36
quote these ancients out of context to prove the Father is
36:39
the soul God to the exclusion of the Son, they are engaging in
36:43
shameful ignorance or consummate depravity.
36:45
The early church fathers universally held that Christ is
36:48
1 and the same God. While carefully noting the
36:50
mystery of the divine economy and the distinction of persons,
36:54
I want to leave you with a final thought drawn from the very end
36:56
of the text. It is a great challenge to our
36:58
modern sensibilities. It really is.
37:00
We love to figure things out. We like to map every detail, but
37:03
Calvin asks what is the point in disputing whether the Father
37:06
always begets? That is such a speculative,
37:09
unhelpful question. Instead of obsessively trying to
37:12
imagine a continuous act of begetting in eternity past,
37:15
which is a foolish strain on the human mind, what if we recognize
37:19
that these three persons have simply subsisted in God from all
37:22
eternity? Just let the mystery be what it
37:24
is. Yes, the challenge for you is to
37:27
impose a limit on your own curiosity.
37:30
Resist the urge to philosophize beyond the boundaries of
37:33
Scripture. Perhaps the greatest theological
37:35
achievement is to find peace in the majesty of a God who is
37:38
great enough to be incomprehensible.
37:40
You do not need a clean X-ray of the infinite to trust the
37:43
diagnosis of the Word. Thank you for joining us for
37:46
this custom deep dive on Reformed thinking.