Episode 3 - Our Father Who Art in Heaven with Dr. Ryan Rippee

In this episode, Dr. Ryan Rippee, pastor of Trinity Church in Benicia, shares his story of faith and call to ministry. As a native of the Bay Area, Pastor Ryan Rippee has experienced the powerful presence of God through revival in his early years as well as the power of the God in the ministry of his life. 

Dr. Rippee did his PhD work on the doctrine of God the Father, so we explore the glory of God and the truth of the trinity as explored and experienced in his doctoral work in ministry. 

To learn more about this podcast and more that we are doing, you can go to bayareatheology.org. 

This is a podcast of Bayseed Collective. Learn more at bayseed.org. 

This is Theology from the Bay, for the Bay. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You are listening to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. Theology from the Bay for the Bay. This podcast has been brought to you by Bayseed Collective. Learn more about it at Bayseed.org. In this podcast, we host conversations with local ministry and thought leaders on theology, ministry, culture, and life in the Bay Area with Dr. Cameron Schweitzer and Ricky Blaha.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Everyone's a theologian. That's right. Everyone. Welcome to all of our listeners. This is Cameron Schweitzer with the Bay Area Theology Podcast, Professor of Theology at Gateway Seminary, where I also serve as the director of our campus here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today we are blessed to be joined by my good friend Ryan Rippe, the doctor, the professor, the Reverend Ryan Rippey, the pastor of Trinity Benisha. Ryan, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Yeah, great to be with you here today.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Well, brother, it is always a joy to be able to sit with you like I have many times before, and we just shoot the wind, so to speak, banter about theological conversations. And this is what this podcast is about, so that people can uh be brought in, so to speak, into the Holy of Holies. And I'd love for you, uh Dr. Rippy, to introduce yourself to our listeners because you're a Bay Area native, you're a California native like myself. Uh so could you share your story with our listeners about you know how you came to faith, where you grew up, what it was like?

SPEAKER_03 1:29

Sure. So I was uh born in Oakland. My parents grew up in Pinol. So that's where the Kaiser was when I was born. And when I was three, they moved over to Vallejo. So I was raised in Vallejo my whole life. Um we were not going to church at all for the first eight years of my life. My dad was a Christian, my mom was not a Christian at the time. We were not going to church, but then we heard there was this guy from Panol named Steve Fernandez who had planted a church in Vallejo, Community Bible church. And uh my parents were having some marriage trouble at the time, and so they started going to community Bible.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Did they have any religious background themselves?

SPEAKER_03 2:09

My dad uh had gotten saved at a Assemblies of God church that he had um been witness, you know, the gospel had been shared with him uh when he was in high school and into college. Um my mom had gone to a Billy Graham crusade, uh, but uh her parents, none of them had grown up in Christian homes. I started going to North Hills uh Christian Church there in Vallejo, uh uh the school rather that's at the church, North Hills Christian School, when I was in third grade, same year. And that summer I came to faith at the summer camp.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

As a third grader or fourth grade?

SPEAKER_03 2:41

As a nine-year-old, yeah. Wow. As a fourth grader. Um, there was a dear woman named Luella Ross who went to Valley Bible Church in Hercules who shared the gospel with me, and I asked her, Well, how do you know for sure it's true? And she shared with me Romans 10, 9, that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. And I climbed up into my bunk, read Romans chapter 10, and came to faith that night. And I've never been the same.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Did you ever since reach out to her and say, like, thank you?

SPEAKER_03 3:12

Yes, I got the opportunity to talk to her a number of times about that um very sweet uh memory. So, yeah, so fast forward into high school, we were um our youth pastor had started a volleyball tournament to reach out to kids in high school. And uh we got looking back, it was a revival. I didn't know it at the time. I thought it was just what you do, but we saw hundreds of kids come to faith through this volleyball tournament. And one tournament? Yeah, well, it was over the course of a decade. Hundreds of kids came to faith and dozens went into ministry, and I'm just one of them that went into ministry. And then, of course, there at um Community Bible Church, they started a mission sending agency called Exalting Christ Missions and uh seminary called Cornerstone Seminary, and uh that's where I did my master's degree training.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Where'd you do your bachelor's degree?

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Uh UC Davis. I did a history degree at Davis. So then I I you know coming to ministry was the Lord drugged me into ministry.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah, so when you were at Davis, did you think that you're gonna go into ministry? What were you doing that? So what were you getting that history degree for?

SPEAKER_03 4:18

I did not want to be a pastor, I didn't want to be poor, I didn't want to be broke. I grew up poor uh for a portion of my life, and so I was gonna be a computer programmer, make a lot of money, maybe serve in the church, but not be in ministry.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

And I was a computer science major, but my wife and I got married in uh 1995 before I finished college. Okay. And history was my minor, and through a set of God's providences, um, I needed in order to finish, I had to switch to history because there were no prerequisites.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Oh, so what were some just you said some God providences, what were those?

SPEAKER_03 4:57

So I got a job at UC Davis where I got two-thirds off a tuition, so I could actually finish my degree, even though I was a newlywed. And I was working up there at the university, but because of my work schedule, uh, it was hard to do the computer science stuff because of the prerequisites.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Yeah, yeah. All like the hard bio and chem classes.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

No, it was more like the computer programming classes that build upon one another. Back then, this is in the 90s, so like I had to take base, you know, assembler language before I could take Fortran and COBOL. Okay. This was it's all completely different now. But I was working as an Oracle database programmer at the university. So I felt like I had my like the Oracle? Yeah, like the comeback. Like we had that's crazy. I worked for the university, we had these servers, I fell into this job. Um, it was a career job, I thought.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Could work at UC Davis, be a you know be a computer programmer.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

That's right. All my buddies were working with me, the all the department was Christians. It was really cool. But uh, when my first son was born, I had to switch jobs because I couldn't pay the bills. So I went to work in the oil refinery for my dad using a piece of software called Primavera, which Oracle now owns. Okay. And it's been uh my bivocational career for all these years of so you weren't like, you know, getting oil on yourself.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

You were uh helping with the computer systems for the refinery.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Correct. The pen is mightier than the sword. That's right. Um, yeah, my brothers are all went through the pipe fitter route. That's crazy. And my dad was a pipe fitter, and my grandfather, and um, but I was trying to get away from the family business.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

So then you're like the educated, you know, black sheep of the family. Sort of, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

That is true, yeah. So um, well, what happened was when my son was born, all the doors shut to stay at the university. I had to switch jobs. At the same time, uh, I was feeling this burden about pastoral ministry, but really kind of running away from it because I didn't want to do it. Well, the Lord shut any doors for me to get a job that would pay the bills and stay in the computer industry. Uh UC Davis? Anywhere. Anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Okay, so did you move back to Vallejo at this time?

SPEAKER_03 7:09

I was living in Vallejo the whole time. And you were driving in the industry. Yeah. Long story short, I go to Grace School of Theology and Ministries September gathering, Phil Howard, Valley Bible Church. He was preaching on Isaiah 6 about here am I, send me. I wrestled with the Lord in prayer that night and decided in the morning I'm gonna enroll in Bible college classes at grace school and I'm gonna consider pastoral ministry.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Really. Did God also tell you that you're gonna be like Isaiah and go preach with people who won't hear?

SPEAKER_03 7:36

No, but that wasn't also part of the call? That has been a part of my ministry, I feel like, uh, over the years. Yes. Go to people and say, Yeah, see and they won't see, hear and they won't hear. No, it's uh it was very subjective, but looking back in his providence, is it it was wonderful. So I enrolled at Grace School, I went to work at the refinery, and within six months, I went on staff at Grace Church in Napa Valley with my father-in-law doing the student ministries.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

That's so you were working at the oil refinery and going to school, yep, and pastoring at Napa? Yes. So you've just been doing that for like the last 30 years, man.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Yes, that's been the story of my life. Um and the Lord's been kind to me, you know, it's he's provided we I was at Napa at Grace for uh four and a half years, and then uh I accepted a job as associate pastor with Frank Griffith out at Calvary Community Church in Brentwood for 14 and a half years. Wow. And then came back to Bonesha, to the Vallejo area, and wasn't sure what was gonna happen next. And then the Lord opened the door for me to be president of Cornerstone Seminary.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

And did that for six years. And then after COVID, uh when we were walking around in COVID, like everybody was doing walking around, we began praying about should we start a church in Benicia?

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Where were you going to church at the time?

SPEAKER_03 8:56

At the time, I was at uh Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill. Okay. Uh, which Pastor Tony Sinelli is pastor there. There are sending church uh to plant Trinity. Grace is my sending church for Trinity. We planted three and a half years ago, Easter Sunday. Um, and uh the Lord's been very kind to us these last three and a half years. It's been, I told a lot of people it's like I'm uh holding on to the rope, and our father in heaven is dragging us through his providences. So we've seen the Lord provide. Um, we have plurality of elders already. Uh Lord willing, we're gonna be adding two more to bring us to five. And we've sent out a pastor already up to Grace Baptist Eureka, Jason Hunt. And we have a couple more guys in the pipeline to send. And uh I'm just uh really excited about this next phase of ministry.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

So then how did you go from being a California native? Uh-huh. Right? Had had you so you always had Baptistic tendencies? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

The churches we grew up in, uh Community Bible is non-denominational, but Baptistic uh in its uh theology. And then I went to Grace Napa, which is uh general baptist, and then Calvary Community was conservative Baptist, and then um, yeah, and now Trinity Southern Baptist.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah, so then how how did you end up at Southern then?

SPEAKER_03 10:15

When I finished up at Cornerstone, a lot of my professors were encouraging me to pursue a PhD, they saw it in me that I should continue. And but I was pastoring, I at this point had four young children. I had a fifth uh before I ever started my PhD. Um, and that actually postponed it for a little while. So I had a four-year break between my master's and my PhD starting. And because I was pastoring in Brentwood and did not want to move and relocate, yeah, um, and was looking at distance programs, was looking in Europe, uh, was looking at that model. I like the idea of of um being able to travel in a semester format and and but still stay in my pastoral ministry. And uh what happened was I happened to see on Southern's website that they were starting a biblical spirituality uh PhD. And when I heard Michael Haken, Dr. Haken speak about the plan of the program, I thought I'm in. I I was a history major in my bachelor's degree. I loved history during my master's degree. I was just a student of church history even when I wasn't studying, and so wanting to do something with church history at my doctoral level was always the desire. Hand in hand with that, Bruce Ware had come and spoken at our pastor's conference and our church and our seminary. And um, I have the utmost respect for him, and I thought, wow, would it be wonderful to study under him? Because I want to go do this spirituality program. I want to write on God the Father.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

And it was maybe help the listeners know like why Bruce Ware and the Father were why that would have a connection.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Yeah. So Bruce Ware, of course, is uh he teaches at Southern, he's a Trinitarian scholar. Um, when he had come, he had lectured on the Trinity. And in my master's degree, my mentor, Frank Griffith, who I co-pastored with in Brentwood, he taught theology proper for 40 years. And he said to me, Hey, you've had my theology proper class before at gray school, so I want you to write on the father because nobody's writing on the father. And he handed me a book by Tom Smail called The Forgotten Father. That started this study of the Father. Basically, I was told to do it by Pastor Frank, and I said, Sure, yeah, I'll do it. Well, then by the time I was enrolling in my PhD, I had seen the gap in the literature and the need to write on the first person of the Trinity. So I knew that was the subject I wanted to write on. I do all of the the entrance exams, I go through the interview, I tell you know, Dr. Whitney and Dr. Haken, who were doing the entrance exams or interviews, yeah, I want to write on the person and work of the father. And they said, Well, you'll be with Bruce Ware because he's picking up extra students.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

We have they knew that was it gonna were you gonna approach it, or did they say, hey, you have to approach this from a spirituality perspective, or did they say you could do it as like a dogmatic systematic perspective?

SPEAKER_03 13:22

Yeah. Um, so we were the first major cohort in the spirituality program. What year was this? This was 2011. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

And they were doing distance back then?

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Yes, this was this was cutting edge.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

And module, right? The module. It was modular.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

So I would go three weeks a semester and live. I actually lived in the legacy hotel on campus, a total of nine months of my life, uh, for my PhD. But at that time, systematics, church history, New Testament, all of those were still only in person, only on campus. The spirituality program, in a lot of ways, it was kind of a catch-all. It was a bunch of us pastors. There was 18 of us that were in that cohort that that were enrolled, and and many of them are still dear friends to me. But um it it was a bit of learning as you went what that dissertation would look like. None of us had any idea from the beginning. So was spirituality the framework? Was it applied theology? What what was that? So the way that uh Don Whitney pitched it to us is there's a bunch of spirituality models out there, whether it's mysticism in Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, or um you've you've you've got the Pentecostal holiness model. We want to go to our guys first. It's it's underrepresented and Puritan and Reformed evangelical spirituality. I think Michael Haken thought of all of them as church history degrees with a piety uh line running through them.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

So it'd be like a historical theology PhD almost with almost piety spirituality emphasis.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

Correct. And so a lot of my buddies, that's what they ended up doing.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

So they'd look like at the spirituality of Andrew Fuller, the spirituality of exactly you know, name your Puritan.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

Exactly. Okay. Um but then there were some of us that were wanting to do more of like a New Testament study or a systematic theology study.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

So that's what I ended up doing. Um, I'll be honest, the way mine became a spirituality uh dissertation was my last chapter was worship as a response to the doctrine of the father. Okay. So it was a study of the person and work of the father from eternity past to eternity future. So that's a dogmatic study. It's very much a dogmatic study, but the outline I did was a redemptive historical biblical theology outline rather than a traditional dogmatics chapter by chapter subject. Okay. So I ran from, you know, Genesis to Revelation.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Can you walk the listeners through the difference between what a dogmatic like topic by topic would look like versus a biblical theological outline? I could do that. We take these things for granted. So I'm like listening, like, wait, if I didn't know any of this.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

So for example, when I teach theology proper, um, taught that for years, we would start with By theology proper, you mean God before the doctrine of God. The doctrine of God, and and this is actually helpful to distinguish the doctrine theology proper from patterology, the person and work of the first person of the Trinity. So when I teach doctrine of God, what we start with is we start with the unity of God. So we start with uh the divine nature and divine attributes, and those are subjects. So we'll deal with the subject of what is God like, uh, what are the divine attributes? And then we cover all of the attributes one by one. So lay out what some of those attribute attributes are that sure. So you've got uh attributes like truth, holiness, righteousness, love, simplicity, the omnis, the omnis, omnipresence, omnipotence, uh, omniscience. Um, then you have uh, you know, there you kind of have to start with what is an attribute, uh, because there's a lot of ways to arrange.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

How does one who is simple have attributes?

SPEAKER_03 17:12

Yeah, and there's a lot of ways to schedule or arrange the attributes. Um the the easiest way, if I was doing it in the local church, as I at Trinity is I would say communicable and incommunical.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

I was just gonna ask you if you use that sliding skill.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

I I do because I think at a church level it makes a lot of sense. This is the way in which we're like God, the communicable attributes. Uh God is love, we love. Yeah. Uh God is truth, we can speak the truth. Yeah. And then omnipotence, omnipresence, they're incommunicable. We don't now you just have to read a little bit and realize that, well, even though we're not omniscient, we still have wisdom and sapience and knowledge, and so that is a communicable attribute.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Yeah. I think Grudom talks about things that are less communicable and more communicable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

Now the way I arrange it in theology proper class is slightly different. Um, I arrange it by God thinking and feeling and um being, uh, which is the way that Augustus Strong arranged his in his systematic theology. And it's really because of just the teachings methodology and how to then get to certain subjects. So you have all of that, the unity of God. Well, then you go to the subject of the Trinity of God. How is God one and how is God three? And God is Father, God is Son, God is Spirit, but the Father's not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, etc. And so you deal with the doctrine of the Trinity. Uh very often, uh, because of the nature of heresies in the church and the way the deity of the Son and Spirit have had to be defended in councils and throughout church history, uh, the father, the only person who's attacking the deity of the father are atheists. Yeah. And so you don't have a major articulation of the defense of the person of the father.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Because when most people think of the father or the Bible talk about the father, it's just in reference to God. Like if it just says God that's using reference to the father.

SPEAKER_03 19:11

Yes. That's right. That's how scripture uses the word Thaos, God. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

And no one like Marcion or Arias, none of them are ever questioning, unless they're an atheist, the existence of God proper or the father.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

That's right. Now you can get to some heretics attacking the father by denying that his name is eternal. So Arius, for example, denied the name of the eternal son, and in doing so, then denied that the father's always eternal.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Arius, and not that the father is eternal.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Yeah, yeah. I've got a quote in my one of my books. Yeah. Uh so and this, of course, arises again in in modern discussions, um, the feminist uh theology that would say we can use God as mother as well as father and reduce the name father to a metaphor rather than be the personal name of the first person of the Trinity.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

So you're working through the material, recognizing, okay, so I kind of want to do this. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

But I didn't know what my thesis was. I just knew that this is the topic. Okay. And coming to the thesis was a little more challenging because there's not even consensus on what uh patter like what the name of the systematic theology should be. Should it be patrology, patterology, patriology? None of the dictionaries, none of the encyclopedias have a standard. And so that was a fun study. And then which person of the Trinity is being referenced when Theos, God is used, or Lord is used, or um Yahweh, or and there's no study of that. The closest that I found was Murray Harris had when he was dealing with the use of God for Jesus in his book, deals with some of that, but it was mainly in reference to the Son.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Yeah, because that you're right. This is where like most people take that biblical dictum for granted. We all like, oh, well, you know, if we talk a Jehovah's Witness for Mormon, we need to know those. Is it seven, eight, or nine? Like the Theos for Christ, like Christ, Tan, Thaon, Christus, tus, theus. But we take for granted all the other places in the New Testament where Thaos is used in reference to the Father. Right. And so you're not going to be able to do that. And then the question, yeah, it should be.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

And the question then arises, is God used for the Trinity? Or is it only the Father? Or is it only the Father? That's a very good point. And there's not a lot of writing out there on it. Really? So I had a whole chapter on this, and what in my research it's been never is it used for the Trinity.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

It's always for the Father.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Always for one of the persons. So the vast majority is the Father. Yeah. Uh you've got those references of the Son. Um, there's, you know, a handful of them, and then one for the Spirit in Acts, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:56

But you said you were a poacher from a biblical theological verse. Is a systematic topical perspective. Right. So and you said you were still figuring out what your thesis was going to be. So then help me understand how what your thesis was specifically and then how you did a biblical theological.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Yeah, I had some assumptions. So I I hold to uh classical theology as a as a foundation, so I hold to inseparable operations. So you're gonna need to explain what that is. Yeah, so okay, so I hold to that when one person of the Trinity is working, all three persons are working. That the the operations, the opera in Latin, the works of the Trinity is undivided. It's inseparable. Which means the sort of the idea popularly that the father creates, the son redeems, and the spirit sanctifies.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Right, like so there's one person out on the field, the other ones are on the bench. Right. That's bad.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

That's put me in coach, I'm ready to play. Yeah, so I mean it preaches well, but it's not good theology. And so creation's a good example. The father creates through the son by the spirit.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

So you would you so then as I'm understanding it correctly, and so everyone could sort of get what we're trying to say, is in the classical theological tradition, that's from Father through Son by Spirit.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Yeah, those are good um uh prepositions to add to that. Well, so what I argued my di my thesis was that uh among the persons of the Trinity, the Father is always the initiator of every divine operation. So from Father, from Father. From so yeah, so I wouldn't nuance that at all. I would use from the Father, through the Son, by or in the Spirit. Yeah, both prepositions used in the New Testament. And so the Father's the initiator of all divine activity, the son is the executor, the spirit is the perfector, not in separate works, but they do have in each of the works there's something appropriated distinctly to their to their person. The father initiates, the son executes, the spirit perfects. So once I had that thesis, I went from eternity past, so the father planning everything, uh, from the divine decree, dealing with the decree. Then I went to the father creating through the son by the spirit, the father providentially governing through the son by the spirit, then in the old testament, the father promising to send his son by the spirit to redeem. That's old testament, all the promises, then finding their fulfillment in Jesus. So then um at the high point of the ages, the father sending his son, then the father sending the spirit. So then you have basically talking about the spirit's work in the new covenant in the church, and then the father perfecting all things through the son by the spirit in the consummation. So that and then the last chapter was our response.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

So then how was that a biblical spirituality PhD?

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Because the last chapter, our response of worship in the spirit, Ephesians 2 18. Through Jesus, we both, Jew and Gentile in the context, have access in one spirit to the Father. And so I did a robust uh worship Trinitarian-shaped worship theology using remembrance, submission, and service as sort of three words as a paradigm to say that worship is our call to remember who God is and what he's done in the person of his son. Jesus reveals the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then you be in submission, give our lives over in service. So priesthood of believers falls into this, this worship theology, New Covenant worship theology falls into this, and all of it is directed spirit-empowered worship, Christ-centered, uh Trinitarian shape to it, ultimately to the Father.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Why does that matter for spirituality and worship?

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Because uh all of life is worship is what we created. So, I mean, we could we could talk about a couple different directions we could go. Doing what we're created to do. We could go Edwardsian and talk about the the end for which God created the world is his glory. Um, and this is simply an overflow of, you know, creation was an overflow of of God's love and glory on display to to placard Jesus and put him forth, summing up all things in him uh by the Spirit, and then our worship as a response, everything we do individually and corporately. So think about even in the local church, for example. Sometimes I've heard the wife acronym, uh worship, instruction, fellowship, evangelism. Or you might have a philosophy that says exaltation, edification, evangelism, if you want to use three E's, or upward, inward, outward, if uh those philosophies of why a church exists, I would slightly nuance it and say the church exists for worship, and we worship through edification and we worship through evangelism, but everything is worship.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

I feel like a lot of Christians unintentionally are almost like Jesus only Pentecostals. Yeah. And so then that's really what I was getting at with like your last chapter of what why does a biblical doctrine of the father matter in significant ways for worship? If that makes sense. Like that's really what I'm kidding. Like what when most Christians think about like praising Jesus and I'm doing the spirit, and they think of God, they think of maybe the father, maybe just think about praising because how many worship songs are out there that like explicitly talk about I'm gonna worship the father. It's usually like thank you, Jesus. And so no, is that really more my question of what's the payoff of explicit patterology for God honoring worship? That's my question.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

I think it's hugely important because Jesus says, you know, that if you honor him, you honor the one who sent him. Um, you think of all of the doxologies and the benedictions in the New Testament. There will be worship to Jesus, but then it's ultimately to the Father. Philippians 2. Every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And the Father, uh, this was Tom Smail's argument, actually, in his book, that the very first book I read on The Forgotten Father? The Forgotten Father. When was that written? It was written in the 80s. Okay. And he he came, he was an Anglican who was part of the charismatic renewal within Anglicanism. So he was talking about, you know, uh this sort of Christ-centeredness, exactly what you mentioned, but then also because of the charismatic renewal in Anglicanism, this emphasis on the spirit, but that the father's forgotten. He's forgotten. And I think what happens is people don't understand that the father is for them, that he initiated all of this. Yeah. That uh John 3 16, God, the Father so loved the world he gave his son. I think most people think that God is the father, is sort of the old testament's, you know, angry God that Jesus has to talk off the ledge. Yeah. That Jesus is, you know, I mean, uh Talladega nights when um Sweet Baby Jesus. Will Farrell says he wants to pray to the one he wants to pray to is Sweet Baby Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Sweet baby Jesus. Or the Leonard Skinner Jesus.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Yeah, but but it what's amazing about that, I know it was comedy and it was meant to be. But it hit something on the head. It hit a truth, is that a lot of people feel more comfortable talking to Jesus or who they imagine Jesus to be than the Father. Oh, yeah. And I think it's because so many people have a wrong understanding. They apply their human father to God the Father. So angry, absent, abusive, um, you know, that that the father, if he's even there, he's someone who's mercurial in his, he's ready one day to love you and one day to hate you type thing. And yet we know from the study of the attributes that he's unchanging. Yeah. And so he's the father of lights in whom there's no variation or shifting shadow, from whom every good and perfect gift comes, James tells us. So I think it's hugely important. Think about the doctrine of adoption. This idea that we are brought into the family of God and given his name, and that we are not just justified. J.I. Packer in his famous knowing God says adoption is a greater privilege than justification. And I think he's right. That we're brought into the family, we're given inheritance rights. Uh, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places uh has been given Ephesians 1 from the Father.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

In addition to being given the earth, yeah. Being able to judge the heavenly.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

And we're going to rule and reign with Christ forever. We've been seated in the heavenlies with him.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Um that's all from the Father.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Romans 8. If he did not spare his own son, how will he not with you freely give us all things? Thanks. Yep. It's all over the place. And once you have eyes to see it, if you start reading the word God as Father, the first person of the Trinity, you begin to see that this God who created us is giving us his best when we're at our worst. He's giving us his son, he's giving us his spirit, he's loving us, he's initiating, he is for us, that we have this like Hebrew says, it puts in us a confidence, parasia, a boldness to say, I'm gonna go into the presence of the Father and ask him for what I want. And he never considers my coming shameful because of who I am to him, because I'm in his son. John 17, I think it's verse 23. In that day, they will know that the Father has loved you as much as he's loved me.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

A watching world. And if I if you just say that, that the you know, if I said it out of context of John 17, the Father loves you as much as he loves Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

That'd that almost sound like idolatry and heresy.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

Almost heretical. Yeah. But that's what Jesus said was true. And the watching world would see it. That we're gonna be vindicated and shown that the father loves us. So I think it's massive. I think it's it's it's absolutely life-changing. It it's what Romans 8 Paul says that we have not been given the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but we've been given the spirit of adoption by which we cry out on the side.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Yeah, so you're saying all these great gifts of salvation, justification, everything, adoption. We could go down the list, right? Most people inaccurately think of that as from the son. Yeah. And then the father's initiated. That's right. So that's where you're saying the payoff is. Yeah. Especially now, we start thinking about applied theology and why doctrine matters, is so many people have, like you said, unbiblical views of the father. They maybe are uncomfortable with using the word father in prayer. And so this is your sort of biblical spirituality point, is that when you recognize how everything's from the father as a gift of love and grace, we should be able, like you said, to approach him with boldness and to recognize the the the loving being that he is. And and so that's sort of what you're getting. That's the payoff. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

And isn't that why Jesus came to reveal the father? That's right. So that we would know him for who he is. And so I think that this idea of a Christo monistic Christianity, Jesus only, yeah, is is so anemic because Jesus' whole purpose for coming was to reveal the Father. That's right. Philip, John 14, just show us the Father, Jesus, that would be enough. I if you've seen me, you've seen. You've seen the Father, yeah. And this is something people don't get. As much as they love Jesus and they love what's true about Jesus, and everything you're talking about, where wow, we get all these things when we get Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Our sinner forgiven, we're saved from hell, we're adopted. But it's so all through the father, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

You've seen the father. So Jesus' heart towards sinners, Galatians 2.20. The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. That's true of the Father as well. Now the Father didn't become a man, he didn't give himself up for us, but the father initiated that.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

He gave up his one and only son for his beloved son.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Because he so loved the world. And so it it's revolutionary. And and this is this is how I've said it to my people that when you're pressed by the cares of life, when you're pressed by indwelling sin that remains, when you understand this rightly, you don't run from your father in heaven, you run to your father in heaven. I saw a little meme on Facebook a couple years ago that I thought captured it really well. It was a little post-it note. It says, Religion says, I blew it, my dad's gonna kill me. Christianity says, I blew it, I gotta call my dad.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

That is like if I could distill it down to how revolutionary it is. That's awesome. I guess you chill the thing about Vance is that is how we should see our father in heaven is I blew it, I gotta call my dad.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Yeah, it's like the prodigal son who recognizes I gotta go home to my dad, and the dad receives him with joy and doesn't say, you know, repent. He says, No, slaughter the calf. Like my son's a party.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

That's right. I put a ring on him, he's mine. I put a robe on him. That's right. It doesn't matter that I already gave him his inheritance because everything I have is his. And even the older brother, it's amazing in that, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

So the older brother Who's the one that's mad in that story?

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Yeah, he complains, you never gave me a calf. He didn't give me a party to have a party. Yep. And what the father says there, son, all that I have is yours. In other words, you could have had a party every night. Yeah, you could have had a calf every night because they already belong to you. Yeah, like the elder brother doesn't understand the character of the father either. I think it's an absolutely fabulous uh parable. I I've written on it, I love it. Um, but this reveals the heart of the father. Um it was funny. I was just uh showing my uh 20-something boys. I have a 23-year-old and 20-year-old son, and I was showing them uh songs from the 80s, uh Christian hits from the 80s. And there's this classic one, Benny Hester, When God Ran. You know, the course, the only time I ever saw him run was when he ran to me, took me in his arms, held my head to his chest, said, My son's come home again. You know, and I was a kid in the 80s, and that song, like it, you know, 80s Christianity was an odd time musically. Solo music, it was like it was like, you know, uh American Idol auditions every Sunday at church, and they were good and bad. And but that song was sung a lot, and I would cry every time because it's like just what an idea of the heart of the father. When we received forgiveness, when we received salvation, when we were brought into the family, the father's the one who initiated and drew us in and started the whole process. He's not reluctantly saying, Oh, I guess I have room for one more. No, he sent his son to seek and save the lost. Hallelujah.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Amen. So do you think then that Christian worship that falls short of speaking of the father, thinking about the father, worshiping the father is unbiblical?

SPEAKER_03 37:09

I want to be careful here because uh Is it dangerous?

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Is it half-formed?

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Yeah, I I would say that that it we should at least be more intentional in our corporate worship, how we structure things, yeah, how we talk about things. I don't think anyone's song should hold the weight of our entire theology because that's not the nature of music. You just look at the psalms and you see that's not true. So I wouldn't want to judge any one individual song on a lack that the author was not in trying. It's like judging authors for the book they didn't write.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

It's just not fair. Yeah. Now, with that said, what I try to do at Trinity when because I have been leading music for a long time, um, and still half the time lead music at Trinity, is I try to organize the order of service and the selection of music to take the shape of the gospel. The entire set, which means I'm gonna be talking about the Father and the Son and the Spirit. We're gonna be talking about call to worship and confession and lament and assurance of forgiveness. We're not gonna stay in that confession. We're gonna be assured our sins are forgiven through the finished work of Christ. We're going to have songs of thanksgiving, remembering and rehearsing everything we have in this new covenant reality, and we're gonna be singing about what it means to be enlisted to service and to go out and share the gospel and to be about this work that we're left to do. Think of communion. Very often it's very Jesus-centered. But if you are a little more Christ Christocentric Trinitarianism, Christ-centered Trinitarianism, be a little more robust. You realize communion is as much about the Father who gave the Son, but it is about the Son who is giving. And about the Spirit who's brought about the new covenant that is remembered in communion. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. So we take communion every week at our church, and we it has it gives us an opportunity to try to find something new to say because every week. But what the beauty of that is you never exhaust the gospel, and when it when you understand the Trinitarian shape of the gospel, and it's everywhere in scripture, then you begin talking about the persons. Um, so you can talk about the father in communion, that the whole reason Jesus' body was broken and blood shed was so that he could come back again, he could have that marriage supper of the Lamb and bring us into the presence of the Father. And as Revelation 22 says, we'll see his face and his name will be on our foreheads, and we'll rule and reign with Jesus forever in his midst, and we'll serve forever as a kingdom of priests. Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

It is incredible. Yeah. So it gets to your point earlier, right? That most of us, you know, our church included, myself included, are unintentionally Christocentric, but in a sense of like we we say we're Trinitarian, but we're mostly Jesus and the Son and the Spirit. And the Father, that's what you said is so right. Like the Father is forgotten, taken for granted.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

I do think that Christians, um, because they have the new covenant and the spirit indwelling them, the spirit stirs up affections for God as Father, Romans 8 says. So we cry out Abba Father. So I think Christians, even if intellectually they're not thinking in a Trinitarian nuance, their instincts because of the new birth, they're thinking about the Father. Yeah, they're praying to God, they're you know, they're praying Father in heaven. It's how Jesus taught us to pray, our Father in Heaven. So I don't want to be overly critical. Yeah, of course. But I do think that that we could um if if we've gotten off kilter, it's a good corrective to just to to adjust. We don't want to be on a pendulum and swing so far that we say, well, now we're going to uh honor the father above the son, because that would then fall into the same errors of Arius and the early church or the Jewish religious leaders who denied the honor of the son and said, We glorify the father. Uh so we we don't want to be on a pendulum and overreact. But yeah, I think we could um there could be a little bit to learn here.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

I'm curious when you looked at like the Old Testament treatment of the Father's biblical theological development. I know a lot of people wonder when God speaks in the Old Testament, when it speaks about the word of the Lord coming or there's these theophanies. Do you think that was the father? Do you think that was the son?

SPEAKER_03 41:37

Great question. I don't know for sure. I would say that the New Testament use of the Old Testament is super helpful here. So what you see in the New Testament is that the word Lord curios, it translates Yahweh or or Adonai in the Old Testament, and the vast majority of the time it makes the person it's referring to the Father. For example, in Romans, when Abraham, when God spoke to Abraham, the Lord spoke to Abraham, uh uh it's the father who's speaking. Um now I tend to be pretty traditional, and the early church fathers saw the Old Testament Theophanies as Christophanes.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

And I tend to think that's true, that that paradigm of no one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten God who's at the Father's side has revealed him. I do think that that's true. I mean, you see this with Isaiah six, which you would think that's the father because it's the throne and the the robe of his, you know, is filling the temple and his glory is on. And but then Jesus said, Isaiah saw my glory and spoke of me. So we know Isaiah six is the son. Yeah. The preincarnate son. There's been some monographs that have argued, you know, one way or the other, whether it's always God the Father or the Son. I we just don't know. Now I would lean towards it being um a preincarnate manifestation of the Son.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Yeah, because then, like when Paul talks about God dwelling in unapproachable light, you would say that's the Father.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

Yes, absolutely, whom no man has seen or can see. That's right, except the Son who makes him known. That's right. And that's kind of how you know, like the first chapter I deal with all of this, which person is it? And usually you just broaden the context and you can see that God is the father in a lot of these cases. Here's how I generally, when I've taught it, I've said the God of the Old Testament is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I'm not trying to make an absolute statement. Obviously, the Son is uh seen in certain Old Testament passages, there's mention of the Spirit, but Yahweh Adonai, who is making covenant and speaking with the people of God, is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

But then when there are appearances, you would say that Christophanes. So, like, what about the Shekinah glory?

SPEAKER_03 43:56

Yeah, I would say that's the Son. Really? I think so, because um I I'll give you the New Testament where I think it's it's uh in in John one, when when it says the word became flesh and dwelt among us, we beheld his glory, glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and Karas Kyolathea, grace and truth there, uh is a translation of Hesed and Ameth in Hebrew. Uh covenant, steadfast love and faithfulness. And what John is saying essentially is the glory that led Israel through the wilderness, the glory that was the Shekinah, the the pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night that rested on the the tabernacle that demonstrated God was at home, that glory became flesh and dwelt among us, and it's Jesus. I think that's what John is arguing in John 1.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

But yet that's different from like what you said, the Father was the God with whom the God they worshiped, that was the God with whom they covenanted was the Father.

SPEAKER_03 44:56

Yeah, so so it's a bit of a mystery, isn't it? Because if the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament, there's shadows, there's echoes, there's you see, even in creation, you know, Psalm 33.6, the church fathers would run to that psalm that the that God, the Lord, made the heavens through his word and through his breath. Yeah. Uh, and they would say there's the Trinity. Well, I do think that that is consistent with the Trinitarian shape of creation. And I would use that as a not as a uh proof text that the Trinity is in the Old Testament, but a cumulative case that the echoes and shadows were there.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

And so that's the distinction then that Jesus highlights in the Psalms the Lord said to my Lord.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Well, yeah, Psalm 110, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

So I my Hebrew's not as good as it were. So it's I'm assuming Yahweh said to Adonai. Yahweh said to Adonai.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

So sit at my right hand.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

Okay. Yeah, and that's a fascinating one because that psalm is quoted more times in the New Testament than any other psalm. And every time it's a defense of the deity of Jesus as the messianic heir of David.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Yeah, what you're wanting to highlight is that that's the father speaking to the son.

SPEAKER_03 46:05

Yeah. So I assume David as a prophet was overheard this divine conversation, as it were. Um, and he wasn't referring to himself, but to his heir. Um, yeah, you've got um think of the creation account in Genesis 1.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

I was just gonna ask you about that. So then what do you do with uh let us?

SPEAKER_03 46:26

Yeah, so I would, again, I'm very traditional. I I'm a historian at heart, and so the church fathers would say that is the Trinity.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

So wait, it's isn't it just like the plural we? It is the plural we but isn't it just the royal we like you know, how English kings talk about we say this.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

It could be. I mean, uh Gordon Wenham in his commentary and word biblical commentary, he has the most persuasive, strongest argument for that position.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Is that something that was common in the ancient Near East?

SPEAKER_03 46:53

It was common in the ancient Near East. Um however, the New Testament church, I mean the the church fathers post-New Testament, the Antonicene fathers, the ones who spoke Greek and and who were closest to the the apostles, they said that was not a royal plural we, but that was the father speaking to the son. And it's not that's not the angelic hosts. Could be, but I don't think so. Like I, you know, you have to be a little bit humble and not like hold to a strong position on this because I mean we're 2,000 years, well, more than that. I mean, we're however many thousands of years divorced from Moses writing that account. And I think there's some humility there. I'm not convinced it's the angelic court, and I don't think it's a a plural royal we.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

I think it's attached to making them in our image and our light. Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

And and but you still have them the mechanics in Genesis 1 and 2 of creation and the language of it that can be difficult to reconcile. Okay, if the father's speaking, let there be light, well, then there was an execution of that word, which is the son, and there's a perfection of that, which is the spirit, at least from a theological synthesis of inseparable operations. That is, that every divine work is done by all three persons because they're working out of the divine nature, not working individually.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Well, I know the early fathers would talk about this. You know, my dead friend Jonathan Edwards talks about this that God introduces himself as a plurality in the opening chapter of the Bible. They'd say, Look, there's the let us in our image that would never be used of angels. And they would also point out, look, you have you know the word, and then you have the spirit hovering over the waters. Like to them, it was obvious, it was right there.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Yeah, and and I I tend to agree with that. I do I resonate with those arguments. Uh modernism. Modernism has oh, you can't do that. Uh yeah, has made that difficult from an exegetical standpoint, or at least you have to make a stronger case. But the New Testament use of the Old Testament really helps us use it. Of course. And we are on this side of the cross, and so we get the benefit of using the New Testament revelation to interpret the Old Testament revelation. And so I think we're on very um solid ground to see echoes and shadows of the Trinity in the Old Testament and not reduce it to simply the Father, or even worse, some undifferentiated deity, which tends towards modalism, the idea that God sometimes appears as father, sometimes as son, sometimes as son. Modalism Patrick, oh, yeah. Oh modalism Patrick.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Going back to your biblical theological treatment and then some of the dogmatic stuff as well, what are some of the uniquenesses of looking at pyrology specifically? And the the I'll call it like the theological payoff. Like, what are some of the unique wrinkles or things that you see about a articulating a doctrine of God that has robust doctrine of the father? Like what what are some of those things you notice biblically theologically or systematic theologically?

SPEAKER_03 50:01

Yeah, I think you know what we're doing is we're not saying anything radical or new because it's all the same things we've been talking about. It's just shifting the lens of the camera slightly to look at the first person of the Trinity.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

And I I think the payoff um is it pastorally is what brings comfort to people. Yeah. So you might get someone who really chafes under the idea of God's sovereignty and this idea of a decree where God plans everything and and particularly election and choosing some to go to heaven. And well, that's divorcing it from the character and the person of the first person of the Trinity.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

The father, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:48

The father. And so it makes it seem like everything is arbitrary or out of a hat or mathematical, or even worse, that it's coming from this evolutionary idea that the God of the Old Testament is bloodthirsty and vindictive, and so any type of sovereign decree and choice is something inherently bad. And in what about human free will and all of those type of things? But then when you begin to see that all of these promises that are fulfilled in Jesus, all of these promises made come from a loving Father who has created the heavens and the earth, who has made us in his image, and who has a plan to restore all things and undo the fall and make all things new, and has included us in that plan, even though we don't deserve it, simply out of his good pleasure and his love, because he's that type of generous giver. Yeah. This is this is everything we want. I mean, this is what we hope for and want. And I think that's at the level of hope doesn't put us to shame, scripture says. It doesn't disappoint us. And I think people who don't understand who the father is, they have this suspicion that the father's gonna disappoint them, that he's gonna let them get.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

Like, and so the the son in Jesus makes more sense. Like that's the that's the better way to sort of think about God. And so then as as people are hearing you describe like the father who has this plan, he lovingly comes after us, he sets his heart on us, even though we're evil and we hate him. They might cringe at like that's from a father, yeah. And so you're saying that's where like it seems too good to be true. It seems too good to be true, right? And it's because we're reading our poor experience of our fathers back into God the Father, right? When you're saying it should be the other way around.

SPEAKER_03 52:58

Yeah, so kind of back into spirituality and prayer, right? Jesus taught us to pray to our father. Uh-huh. But actually, Luke 11 is fascinating to me because that's the the Lord's prayer there, where it's kind of the abbreviated version that that not everybody has memorized. Um, but the the way Jesus teaches on prayer, because it's the same question, teach us how to pray, like John the Baptist uh teaches his disciples. And what Jesus basically says in Luke 11, if I could paraphrase him, is rather than giving you a method, let me introduce you to my father in heaven. And he walks through and he's he uses who of you has a friend at midnight and you have people unexpectedly come to your house and you go knock on his door, and he says, I can't get up and give you bread right now because my kids are in bed with me and all of that. Now, in Jewish culture, hospitality was king. Of course. No neighbor would have refused to give bread. So and Jesus is telling a story tongue in cheek. People have misunderstood that parable to think that that is how the father is in prayer, and that we have to be persistent and we have to keep knocking on the door until we finally twist his arm, finally get him to get out of bed and give us an answer to our prayers. But that's not what Jesus was teaching. He was teaching the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:14

To say, your father knows how to give you good gifts the first time.

SPEAKER_02 54:19

Yeah, just like all of you would know that if your friend knocked, you'd get up, even though it might be hard to you.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

Yeah. And and this is a human, uh, which is an outrageous illustration in Jewish hospitality culture that they would have been laughing at the story.

SPEAKER_02 54:31

Of course I would get up. I'd tell my kids move.

SPEAKER_03 54:33

Yes. And how much more will your father? And then he says, ask, seek, knock.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:37

Um which and then he says, which of you, if your son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake. Which of you, you know, if he asks for a loaf of bread, we'll give him a stone. If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? What Jesus is teaching is the Father is greater than any human father. Yes, human fatherhood does point to divine fatherhood. Jesus is using that illustration. But he says, You inherently are evil, but you know how to give good gifts to your children. How much for more does a good God know how to give good gifts uh the first time? In fact, just ask. Just seek, just knock. The door will always be opened. Seek and you will find, ask and you will receive. Why? Because you're always heard, because you're always loved. That's what Jesus is teaching. This father in heaven always hears you the first time. He always answers. Now he might answer with something, he might answer with a no because he's going to give you something better.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:40

Because you're asking for a snake rather than a fish.

SPEAKER_00 55:43

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 55:44

You're asking for a stone rather than bread, and he's saying, No, I'm not giving you that which would harm you.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

And what he does give in Luke 11 is the Holy Spirit. And I think that's a reference to the new covenant. Yeah. I think that what Jesus is getting at is he's giving you the gift par excellence. He's giving you the gift of new covenant realities where you will be united to Jesus, you will have all of these blessings that are in Christ, and you will inherit all things, and you will be sealed with the Spirit. You will never be abandoned, you'll never be forsaken. You're secure in the hands of the Father, secure in the hands of the Son, John 10, and his name is on your forehead, and you are his you it is you are owned, you are loved, you are accepted, you belong, you will never be cast out. I mean, this is what we long to hear. And it's not just wishful thinking, it's reality grounded in the character of the Father. So that's it's I think it's powerful, it's pastoral, it's practical, it it goes to the deepest level of our prayer life, it goes to how we read our Bibles, um, it goes to how we respond when we're pressed by trials and sin that remains. Do we run to him or do we run from him? If we run from him, we're misunderstanding him.

SPEAKER_02 56:59

So I feel like a lot of people though would think, oh, well, no, that's just the son. Like I'd go to the sun. Because that's what going back to what we said earlier, a lot, it's just like functionally Christocentric in a bad sense, but not recognizing it's the Father is the one to whom we should run because it's from him that have come the Son and the Spirit.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Right. Even though we know Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Again, but it's mediatory, there's the through language.

SPEAKER_03 57:22

Right, I know.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

Have you seen this truth transform people's lives?

SPEAKER_03 57:26

Absolutely. Uh I have become so I finished my my PhD in 2016. So I've been I've been on this hobby horse for a decade now.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 57:35

Absolutely, 100%. It has become just woven into the very fabric of my local pastoral ministry, and I have seen massive uh changes and uh in people. For example, uh, there's a woman in my church who uh she grew up in a Roman Catholic background, so just that sort of guilt, anxiety, and she's been a Christian a very long time, uh godly woman, and yet since Trinity started and she's been there and hearing this kind of thing. I mean, she wouldn't take communion because she just felt like there might be some reason she's not qualified to take it. Now we're doing it every week, so now it's becoming a crisis. Yeah. Once a month, you have a crisis one day a month.

SPEAKER_02 58:21

So you can put that off.

SPEAKER_03 58:22

Once a week, you have a crisis every week. And so then we ended up talking and talking through this what it means to be accepted and and what it means that we can draw near to the throne of grace and receive grace and mercy to help in our time of need. And that's the father. Uh-huh. And now she's become the biggest advocate for weekly communion in our church, and this idea that we get to draw near to the Father and remember the Son, and remember that we've been given the Spirit in the new covenant, and this is a promise that he will keep, that he's gonna send the Son to come back and make all things new, and we're gonna be with him forever. Like it's really wonderful to see. I finished my dissertation. I was in Brentwood. My mentor, Frank Griffith, whom I love dearly, his fingerprints are all over my ministry. He had he had gotten diminished with dementia, and and um he basically wanted to preach till he died. And it it became a point where I had to end up resigning and leaving because I just couldn't wait anymore financially. It was difficult.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

Even though he was slipping, he didn't see it.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

Yeah, he didn't see it, and it I didn't feel right to push him out. Um he had planted that church and I had come a year after, but I didn't feel right, and so so I left. And in it was the hardest decision of my life, and I told my kids that Christmas, because we always rehearse every year the good things the Lord has done. And I said, I just finished writing this book on God the Father, and now I'm having to live my theology. Do I believe that he is good and does good when I don't get what I want? Because what I wanted was to stay there and pastor there till I died. Yeah. And I didn't get what I wanted. Do I still believe he is good and does good?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:00

Just like you'd ask your little children at one time to trust you when you didn't give them the treat they wanted or the treatment. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:08

When they wanted. You know, but it it was I had to live out my theology in a very deep way. And even recently, the same thing. And so it's it's I I a hundred percent, you know, I I often will say in kind of a provocative way that we have refrigerator rights in the kingdom of God. When we lived in Brentwood, we had a neighbor kid um who was in between the ages of two of my boys, and it's a great story. His name's Michael. Michael, I come home from uh the office one day, and none of my family's in my house, but Michael's at my house eating cereal at my kitchen table. Got it.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:44

And I said, Hello, Michael, where's Jen? Where's my wife? Oh, she's next door. Okay, where are my kids? Oh, they're swimming down uh two doors down. And uh I said, Okay, um, is the cereal good? Yeah, all right, great. And like he knew he had access to my refrigerator and could eat my food because he was part of my family. That's a good idea. Like adopted into my family. We have refrigerator rights in the kingdom of God, meaning we don't have to ask permission to seek God. We don't need to wait, we don't need to be extended an invitation to come over to into his presence. We have access anytime, all day, to ask him whatever we want, and he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think. So we can't even ask or think too much, because according to Paul in Ephesians 3, he does exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or something. Because he has everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

He has a cattle in a thousand hills.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

And so Christians live they they just live with a lack of confidence and a lack of boldness and a lack of they think they're like Esther who's gonna come in and maybe King um is gonna is gonna you know Hajwaris is gonna chop her head off or kill her. That's not our Father in heaven. We have access because of who we are to him in Jesus. We our approach is never shameful, he never rejects us, he even gave us the spirit, Romans 5.5, to shed abroad his love into our hearts. That's right. To make it real to us. I think it's not in the academics and the theological nuance that I find the most important discoveries. It's in the pastoral, practical, day-to-day life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

But it was recognizing theologically and biblically that this was the water you were swimming in, that's why you're wet, sort of like in the sense of we, you know, fish don't know they're in water, right? Because it's the water they live in. And so, in the same way, you recognize as you look through the scriptures that, well, the father's everywhere. Everything that I thought of as being like from the Son was from the Father. And he's usually the God direction, unless, like you said, it's directed at the Son sometimes or one time to the Spirit. Right. All the talk with all the positive things that we think about when we think about a God are from the Father. Yeah. And that changes everything. It does. It really does. So you're right, it's not like there was like this, ooh, a new thing I learned, but it was more so like this is from the father. This is how I should think about the father. Yeah. And then that has payoff in my own life, and then in the lives of those that I lead in ministry.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:32

Well, then I gotta ask you the uh uh the tricky doctrinal question. I was gonna you knew you had to know it was coming because you studied with Bruce Ware. I got asked about this the other week about what's up with this whole debate right now about the son submitting to the father. Because you mentioned that earlier, right? Like the son says, you know, all things have been given to the son, but he's gonna give them back to the father. So the father may be all in all. Yeah, yeah. So some listeners may be aware of this, you know, debate right now about what's called eternal functional subordination. Right. And whether or not the subordination we see of the incarnate son is merely temporal, like just in redemptive history, or has the son always submitted in a certain sense to the father eternally. Right. So could you maybe flesh out what that question is, what the debate is, what both sides are saying, and why this again has payoff in terms of the way we live, the way we do ministry?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

So I think the reason that this topic has come about is that theologians have tried to do justice to the biblical language, particularly in the New Testament. What does it mean that the Son uh is sent? What does it mean that the Son submits? What does it mean that the Son says, not my will, but your will be done? Yeah. Of course, church history, this has been discussed on and off in different ways, not quite in this with the same lens focused on uh eternal subordination. This is a newer issue. Um you will notice that the functional subordination in EFS as an acronym is a desire. This was a acronym, uh, if not coined by Wayne Grutom, it was at least popularized in his systematic theology. Yeah. And it was his attempt to distance eternal subordination from a uh sort of Aryan view that the sun is lesser, yeah, functionally you know, or essentially rather inferior, but that this is only a functional subordination.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

And and you know, Bruce would in redemptive history for the sake of carrying out redemption.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:35

Yeah, well, uh Grudum would say that the submission is eternal. Yeah, I know. And that it's functional, but that the submission is not essential, it's for the sake of carrying out redemption. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Or even in eternity past, Grudom in his first and second edition of Assist Mac Theology talked about, right, that because of the way that relationships have to be ordered, the son the father was being in the prime, and the son has to sort of submit even eternity. Eternally to the cause of authority. Is that is that the right way to understand that?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:03

Yeah, and and and at the heart of it, you know, it it's this desire to say what it doesn't mean is essential inferiority. That's right. Yeah. Bruce Ware had his own has his own acronym, Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission, to speak to this. Others have used E ESS, Eternal Submission of the Son, no mention of the spirit. Um kind of the nature of it is very often it's around the father-son relationship. There was, of course, the big debate in 2016 at ETS uh academically where wherein Grudom debated. I was in the room, I was there. It's the year I was defending my dissertation. Um on the doctrine of the father. On the doctrine of the father, yeah. And I I would say that there's a couple questions that have to be answered. Um, and you've kind of hit at some of the heart of it. What is it, you know, what are we saying? What are we intending to communicate by this? The first question would be Is authority an attribute of God? Yeah. So so some would say authority is an attribute, so they would see some sort of eternal submission as demanding the son be inferior because he lacks the attribute of authority. So if the father has authority eternally and the son doesn't, now the father has an attribute of God that the son doesn't have.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:18

He's more God than the son.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:19

He's more God than the Son. And so if authority is an attribute, then we cannot speak of eternal submission. Now I'm not convinced authority is an attribute, but again, I mentioned earlier that that the scheduling of the attributes can be very difficult. I would argue the definition of an attribute is something that's uh true of God in eternity past apart from creation. So wrath is not an attribute, because wrath is a manifestation of God's righteousness at sinful creatures. And sin is not eternal, so God has not been showing wrath forever. Um, if that makes sense. So authority is not eternal in the sense that there's not been a creation for God to have the creator-creature distinction to have authority in eternity past. Okay, that's one issue you have to reconcile. Another issue is the issue of the divine will. Does the will reside in the persons or the natures? Um since Maximus the Confessor, uh, you have the church has said that the will resides in the nature, not the persons.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

So there's one will versus three wills.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:32

One will versus three wills in God. Now, what that issue was dealing with was the nature of the will in the sun, uh, in the hypostatic union. That is his divine nature, his human nature together. He's fully God, fully man. So the sun has two wills, a divine will and a human will. But the divine nature only possesses one will. Yeah. And so you have if you have authority and submission as eternal in the divine nature of God, some would insist that demands the wills be pushed into the person and not the nature. And then you have this problem of what if they want something different? Um, that's always the problem if you have three wills in God, is that one of the persons would want something different than the other person. So historically, when the son said, This is not my will, but your will be done, he's speaking out of his human will, not his divine will, submitting to the will of the Father, which is the divine will, and so there's no problem. That has to be wrestled through in this situation. Then you have this question of does the economy ever end? So eternity future, there will always be creator-creature distinction. We see Revelation 22 revealing the divine throne, Father, Son, Spirit, him who sits on the throne, the Lamb at his right hand, and the river of living water proceeding from the throne, which I take to be a reference to the spirit. So you have this shaping of the divine monarchy and the creator-creature distinction, but it does seem to picture that him who sits on the throne is not the son or the spirit, it's the father. And the lamb is at his right hand and the spirit is proceeding. So it seems to be complementary to and consistent with uh eternal generation and eternal procession, and it's how God is revealing himself in eternity future, our triune God, that is. And so if the economy never ends, the way God, the Father, Son, and Spirit are revealing themselves to us in eternity future must be consistent with eternity past. So some would limit authority and submission to the redemption, to the decree, to the covenant of redemption, whatever. But if that goes on for eternity future, then do we ever really know God in his essence? So that's why a lot of people will say this is a mystery and we shouldn't delve into it. And I confess there's some uh benefit to that. We have to be very humble. I do think the doctrine of the divine monarchy is the path forward in this. And you have a book coming out on that. Uh Lord willing. Talk to us about that. What is happening?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:02

Divine monarchy and how that works this issue.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:04

Yeah, so the divine monarchy is speaking about uh the divine rule of God. Uh monarchy, monarchy is just the one rule of God. So how do you have one rule with three rulers? Um, and I do think this is the path forward for this EFS debate. I I wonder um if the language of eternal submission is so poisoned now that that you know what what Grutum was trying to do with functional or Bruce was trying to do with eternal relations of authority and submission was say this is not demanding the Son and Spirit be inferior, but it's being faithful to the language of the biblical text and everything we see there.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

They would say this helps make sense of you know procession, generation.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:48

Yes, and and um what we see in redemptive history.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

And so they're trying to say that what we see in redemptive history is push back. Yeah, into the eminent trinity.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:58

Yeah, yeah, and and everybody would agree with that to some degree. God is not revealing himself in a different way in redemptive history than eternity, but we will we don't know uh nor will we ever, in my opinion, know God fully because we're create creatures and we're limited. Um Ephesians says that as the ages roll on, he'll be revealing his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus, the Father. So we'll never stop learning about God. But yeah, the divine monarchy, I think, is is the path forward because you have this language of kingdom, this language of rule. Um, and I think it it informs how the persons in the creator-creature distinction relate to one another in their rule. That is another way to speak of authority, isn't it? Uh the way I I used in my book, the way I ended up with it was the father has initiating authority, the son has executing authority, the spirit has perfecting authority. And they all operate out of the one divine will. Uh I think Mike Ovie had some good points about taking the attribute of love. The divine nature itself does not love. The father loves, the son loves, the spirit loves. The father loves in a paternal way because he's the father. The son loves in a filial way, because he's the son. The spirit loves in a spiritual way. The son doesn't love in a paternal way. And so there's in embedded in the eternal names of Father, Son, and Spirit is something about not only how they um relate to one another with regard to the processions, eternal generation, eternal procession, but also how they relate to one another as persons. And so can can eternal submission or this discussion of authority and submission be complementary to and consistent with Nicaea?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:51

That was gonna be the next question. Um it seems like from an outsider perspective who's not involved in this debate, yeah, that those who are quote unquote defending the classical tradition or saying, Well, that's not Nicaea, that doesn't fit with the tradition. But then you might have someone like Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudum saying, Well, we're trying to do what deal with the biblical text.

unknown 1:14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:09

So would you say that sometimes might be the way they're speaking past each other, like being faithful to tradition versus being faithful to text, or the guys who argue against Ware and Grudom say, well, no, we actually are gonna come at you with exegetical arguments, or is it a bit of both?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:21

I I think there's some of that, but I I do think that um there's a sense in which um some of the guys are saying, don't mess with the fourth century. The way it was articulated by the classical um theologians, the pro-Nicene theologians is fine. Don't don't try to come up with new ways to articulate how the persons relate to one another. We are people of the book and of the text. And um what Grudham and Ware in 2016 did was they changed their positions regarding eternal generation and eternal procession.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:59

Ware was a bit agnostic about it. He didn't deny eternal generation. Grudem did deny eternal generation.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:05

Really?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:06

Bruce didn't deny it, but he was more agnostic about I don't see the proof text that they're using for eternal generation to be speaking about eternal generation.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

Oh, because of so that guy came out with an article, then later they retracted.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

In 2016. And they they announced it at ETS in the midst of that debate that both Grudom and Ware, we hold to eternal generation. Because of his article, because of Lee Iron's article.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:29

What did Lee Iron argue in his article?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

Just that monoganace doesn't mean unique, it means only begotten. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:34

So there were some who tried to take only begotten as it's oh, just unique. Right. The liberal critical scars, maybe, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

Correct. And and so once Ware and Grudum saw that it could that it does mean only begotten, now there's biblical evidence for eternal generation for them. And so they changed their position. And so even, you know, um, so what Ware and Grudem would say is their positions are complementary to and consistent with Nicaea.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:02

And then the Nicene folks would try to, you know, ax pick the fork them out and say, Well, no, if you hold eternal functional subordination, you can't be Nican.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:10

That's right. Um, because of, you know, these issues that we mentioned about authority being an attribute, perhaps, or the will residing in the nature, not the persons, perhaps, or the only way you can speak about relations of the persons is through eternal generation and eternal submission. That's what distinguishes the persons. Yeah. And therefore, to say something else distinguishes the persons. I don't want to get into I don't want to get super into the weeds, but are there personal properties um that someone that one of the persons has that the other doesn't have?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:43

So the so that's what the quote unquote classical tradition advocates would say is that like what where and Grudham's saying what they are, they might be saying there's a new way to distinguish the persons. Or the classical tradition said, No, it's the father's the unbegotten God, he's the source of divine being, the son is the one who is generated eternally from the father, the spirit eternally proceeds from the father through the son or the father and the son. Yeah. And those have always been the ways to distinguish the persons. Yes. And so they're saying, well, you're maybe adding something. It's also because the father is the source of authority, and the son and the spirit are not, they have to submit to that authority.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:16

Yeah, and so it and so, yeah. Am I getting that right? I think you're getting it right. And what they're saying is in adding to Nicaea, you're giving new definitions to what the Nicene Fathers meant by nature and persons. Uh-huh. And in sort of this Greek language of what a hoopostasis is, what a, you know, this, you know, and personal properties, what those are. And you know, it's interesting, even when you look at eternal generation and eternal procession or spiration, all that is is a verbalizing of the divine names.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:50

Oh, exactly. I talked about this the other night in class. It's just like a it's a Witcensidian word game of just Yeah, I don't think it's making I I I sometimes it sounds like it is, me, man. Like when you hear someone talk about, oh well, they're moving from like noun to adjective to verb, and how much have they really said other than well, he he's the preceding one, or he's the one from whom procession happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:09

Right. Um now what I've thought is what's at the root then is not the is not eternal generation, eternal procession. It's the eternal names of father, son, and spirit. Now we want to be careful and not say, you know, human fathers and divine fathers, human sons, divine sons, but yet this is the name, the names, the eternal names of the persons of the Trinity that are revealed to us that they have forever that distinguish them.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:37

How do you know that they're eternal versus just the ways that they've revealed themselves to us?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:41

Because you have this language in in scripture of that they're eternal, right? But the names are eternal? Yeah, before the before the son is incarnate, he's the eternal son, right? We have this in a sense when we talk theologically about the first person, second person, third person. We know the minute we do this, that we're saying something. We're not sure what we're saying, but we're saying father, son, spirit. The baptismal formula, Matthew 28. Baptize in the name singular of Father, Son, Spirit, and that order is fixed, first, second, third. And there it's interesting, you know. I think that it's not one of the titles of God that's used, but the names of the person's father, son, spirit. So the names are eternal, they're fixed, they're not reversible, and this is where the processions come from is the verbalization of the divine names. So can we say what what does it mean to be father? What is what is embedded in that name, and how does it distinguish from son, and how does it distinguish from spirit?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:50

What does that mean? Because they were reading uh historical theology, yeah, and specifically the biggest thick green book, and specifically the chapter on like the per, I think it was on the sun. I forgot what chapter was specifically, and there was this long quote that he Allison had put from Augustine's on the Trinity. Yeah. And this is what I meant earlier about the Vitconsidian word games. It was just like he was saying procession, processor, the one who processes, and it's just the same thing with generate and the generating generating. It was just a paragraph of like the different forms of those nouns and verbs and adjects. If you don't, and then he said, Well, what is the student, this very intelligent, uh middle-aged uh Chinese man who's an engineer, just like one of our typical students, he says, Dr. Archer, what what does that even mean? Like, right, what what does it even mean for to to you know be uh a preceding one? Or what does it even mean to be a generated one? Like, and so maybe you can help us as the Trinitarian scholar of what does it mean that there's an eternal generation? What does it mean there's an eternal spiration? What because then you talk about this is what separates the persons, and the the son is it's appropriate that there's a generation because it's sunness like, and then spiration because it's spirit-like, and the father- you see what I'm saying? So, like I know. Now we have to talk about what that all means eternal generation, eternal spiration, and eternal being of the father.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:09

There's a very strong tradition throughout church history of what's known as the apophatic tradition, meaning what we can't. Yeah, there's a lot of what we what it's not, what it doesn't mean. Yeah. And and this is how the church fathers have in humility said, we have to confess mystery. We're in the deep end of the pool here, right? These are the the deep things of God. The sacred things belong to the Lord. And so some of these things haven't been revealed fully. And we are with these God-given brains that are in the image of God that we're trying to understand and reconcile these things. Sometimes we have to confess God is God and we're not. And we won't understand this completely this side of eternity. And so, um, but nevertheless, I I think that theologians have tried to answer this. So the reason generation becomes a word is because fathers generate sons. Um, they begot sons. Yeah. Now, eternal has to be applied to that, the church fathers would say, because he's eternally been the son, co-eternal with the father, and there's never been a time when the son was not, in contrast to Arius, who said there is a time when the son was not. And so the best language we can come up with is to say that the father is the fountain of deity. Yeah. Um deity in the prime, yeah. And so, but eternally the father has generated a son. And what does that mean? Which theologian do we go to, right? Edwards would say God had a perfect idea of himself that was such a perfect idea that it's actually generating another person.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:48

And he's eternally been thinking about himself, and that thinking about himself is a s another person, so perfect, standing there reflecting himself back to himself.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:58

Yeah, you know, and Edwards is probably the greatest mind America's produced. And you read that and you go, That makes sense. Wow, that makes sense. But then you go, is that really what happened? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:07

But he recognized he's just speculating.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:09

Yes, yeah, and Edwards felt it was okay to speculate. Yeah, like he was within the bounds.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:15

Yeah, because he's asking, what does it mean to generate? Like eternal, eternally begotten. Like my daughter was born about a year ago, and I actually saw her be born. It was wild. It was the most wild moment of my life. Yeah, yeah. Like popped out, there she was. I saw it happen. But that was January 1st at 2 40 in the morning. Like she was begotten, it was done. But what does it mean to like have an eternal begetting?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:38

Yeah, I think the safest place we can go is the language of scripture. Yeah. Right? So Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, John 1. Yeah. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God. Uh-huh. Uh the word was there is holding a lot of weight, uh, that the word was God, right? So the use there of God is is kind of unique. Uh so the first in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, the father. The first use of theos is the father, and the word was God. Second use of is is unique one there. It's not uh the only other place that you have something similar is in Philippians 2.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:18

But is there something unique about the Greek he means?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:20

No, no, it's unique about how it's being used because everything that's true of the Father is true of the Son, is sort of an idiomatic way of saying what the weight of was God means there in that passage. Uh-huh. Colossians one, Jesus is the image of the invisible God of the invisible God. So the word icone in Greek image, that Jesus images God. Uh, Hebrews one, he's the exact representation of the representation of his nature. So what we mean by generation is that.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:51

Yeah, and I think that's where I was just trying to speculate. And this sounds a lot, and then you take, does that idea of word, the word of God, is that also an eternal title? And is that appropriate for us? That may the word then corresponds to thought, corresponds to idea. Yeah, right. So you and I was telling the classes, you sort of, at least for me, I don't know how your brain works, but you sort of think about like how ideas form. Yeah. At least for me, a lot of my ideas feel like they just come out of the darkness, like they're just formed and they come to me. It's not as if I have this like, like, oh, the ideas. Yeah. It goes from like seed to tree. It's just like here comes a fully formed idea. And it's almost like ideas are being gotten out of nothing.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:28

At least for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:28

I don't know about how your brain works.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:30

Yeah, maybe. I mean, it it's interesting. I I made a big deal in in my my dissertation on the difference between names and titles. I think word is a title. Yeah. Name is so, and then uh you know, I follow Bavink in this because he distinguishes between personal names and proper names. Personal names, he would say, is what is true of each person of the Trinity. So the Father's the Father, the Son's the Son, the Spirit's the Spirit. But then proper names could be used of any of the persons. So Lord could be used of Father, Son, or Spirit. God could be used of Father, Son, or Spirit. And then titles are things that reveal the character of the person, but is not their name. Um names are also revealing the character, so there's this confusing thing about titles and names. Usually titles uh have to do with um God revealing his character in redemptive history at a particular moment because of his faithfulness, or he's the God who sees when he sees Hagar. Yeah, uh that type of thing. But names are revealing that what's true of God eternally.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:37

And you would say that's where the eternal name idea comes in. Yeah. But I mean, like with the word, the spirit's never called the word, the father's never called the word.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:44

I know. And so that's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:46

And I'd have to Is the sun ever called the breath, the power? No. This is what I'm getting at.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:51

Like I'm trying to think through these with you. Right. Yeah. No, it's fascinating. I mean, I I think I I really am uh, you know, uh uh fan of Edwards. I like his understanding of the Trinity, and I think even his understanding of the Trinity could be a path forward for uh this debate about EFS. Yeah. Um, although I know it wouldn't satisfy uh classical Trinitarians um because Edwards was speculating beyond Nicaea. Though he was Nicene, he was speculating beyond. But that's what I mean about a path forward is is you know, I wonder, you know, are are we being fair to these theologians who are going beyond Nicaea and saying, you know, they're somehow heretics because they've gone beyond what Nicaea says.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:40

I'm really uncomfortable with how I see some of these classical theologians talking to like wear and group, and like, oh, you're a heretic. To me, it's almost like I hear about the early Christological debates of like post Nicaea when you're starting to talk about like pre Cal. You know, those debates of like, oh, well, he was a heretic, and you're a like, well, dude, you guys are all just trying to plumb the mystery.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Yeah, and I do think the debate has sharpened arguments on both sides. Not like sharpened like Vitriol, but like well, that has happened too. But I meant intellectual clarity. It's caused people to have an intellectual clarity because um there is I and I do think it's worth debating. Um, you know, I mean uh there's questions, you know, how does the spirit submit? He doesn't have a human nature to push submission into, and yet the spirit is sent. Um the spirit proceeds, the spirit um doesn't speak out of his own, but what he hears he speaks.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:34

Uh, you know, so and so this is the biblical weight that Grudem and Wear and other people have. It's like they keep being lamblasted by the other side, and they're like, Well, this is what the text says.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:43

Yeah, Philippians 2, he he he doesn't consider equality with God something to be grasped before he's ever incarnate. Yeah. Um, you know, and and and I think, you know, is it godlike to submit? Like that question is that a fair question to ask? Is it godlike to submit? I would say yes, Philippians 2 teaches us that. Yeah, that it is a virtue to submit and godlike. But I you know, Mike Ovey makes this point that submission is seen as inferior and evil and wrong in our culture, and that there is some cultural reading in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:17

And I think that's what Grudham does a great job of in his systematic theology when I know that he gets some flack for it. Yeah, that he argues quite well that submission is not a vice, like it doesn't imply inferiority, where some people think it does.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:30

Yeah, I I think that there's a lot more heat than light in those arguments, and I don't think social media is the place to have those arguments. And I I think that giving scholars and theologians time to write about their thoughts is important. Yeah. Um, but everybody likes hot takes, and and I think we easy, tidy hot takes. Yeah, and I think we fall into the Shiboleth uh problem very easily, where if you don't say it the way I say it, you must be wrong. Um instead of saying, What do you mean by what you're saying? Yeah, that's it. It's another question to say, is that the best way to say it? You know, but but asking what do you mean by what you're saying? Yeah, am I am I understanding you rightly or am I dismissing you because you don't say it the way I want you to say it?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:16

But I hear these debates and I think, man, like is are they just talking past each other? Because is it one a recogn a failure to recognize that they have different theological methodologies? Like maybe one side is you know, like we've talked about, we want to build our theology from the text up. And so then there needs to be a recognition that maybe the text could suggest that. And the other side is I've heard one of them who'd be on this side say, like, well, they build from tradition down and they end in the text. Yeah. And so, like, well, maybe those different theological methodologies play a part in this.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:48

Yeah, they do, right? Absolutely, they do.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:50

And then I mean, I I wonder, like, so you talk about that text of like Philippians 2 or the spirit being sent. So one side might say, Well, that's actually implying not only in redemptive history, that also stretches back to eternity, right? But then the other side would say, Well, no, that's just speaking about redemptive history, right? Yeah, you're right. So then my question to either side would be, well, does the text say that? Does it say, well, the spirit's only, you know, inferior and submit in redemptive history, the sun is only inferior and submits in redemptive history. The text doesn't say that, right? And so both sides, I wish they would have the intellectual humility to recognize they are interpreting a text, but that's not what the text says. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? So they both come at the text, they think, oh, well, the text means this and it can't mean that. Yeah. And they're opposite sides of the same coin. But I just wish they'd say, you know what, brother? That's not what the text says. I interpret it this way, you interpret it that way. Let's be friends and not call each other heretics. Yeah. I wish that would happen. Yeah. But so often people mistake their interpretation of a text for the text itself and the inherent and errant authority that the text has. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like that's what frustrates me with some of these debates.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:01

Yeah, you know, there's one text I would just uh you know want to uh uh put down as a good example of this. It's the end of Jude and the Benediction. I love it, where it's it says, um, to the only God, our Savior, not Father, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:18

So that's the Father is the Savior. That's interesting, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:20

Yeah, only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. So the Father, to him, through the Son, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. There's the word authority.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:33

To him, is that to the Father or the Father through the Son.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:36

Okay. To the Father, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, and then it says before all time.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:46

And now and forever.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:47

So then you're gonna have to make the exodetical argument of who is that to for? Is it to the father and the son or to the father alone that idea of the authority?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:55

Well, so again, yeah. So here's a text that uses the word authority of the father through the son somehow, whatever that forever. Before all time, in eternity past and now, and eternity future. So, you know, I dodged I've tried to dodge how I stand on all of this. I don't know if you noticed that as we've been talking.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:18

Well, and I know in our previous conversations too.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:20

Yeah, I I do with a text like that. What do you do with the text like that? So I have questions. I am very sympathetic to what Grudem and We're saying. I don't know that eternal functional subordination is the right language. I think that it has become in this decade in these last 20 years, so uh laden with baggage that that you're gonna fight over what you mean before getting to a text like this and be prone to misunderstanding. So I'm not sure I want to use that language and say I want to hold to those words, but this concept that divine monarchy, authority, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:03

Divine monarchy, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:03

So this is why I think divine monarchy is the way forward here, because this is an arg uh discussion that's been going on for you know uh 1800 years, um, since the early fathers, and it is uh theology worth retrieving from the early church and looking at and seeing if it's a path forward. And I hope my monograph, you know, contributes to that. Yeah, so buy your monograph. Well, uh it's gonna be a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:26

Your many books that your many books are many books that are coming out. So in our in our last few minutes, I I want to sort of bring this all back and say, why does all this matter? What why does theology matter? Why why does a discussion of how the persons of the Trinity relate to each other matter? Why does divine monarchy matter? Why why why does big theological thoughts matter in in our lives, in our ministries, and the lives of the people listening, and the ministries of the people listening?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:58

John 17, 3. This is eternal life to know you, the only true God, and Jesus whom you sent. So you, the only true God, is the Father and Jesus whom you sent. So eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son. In the Spirit, we could add. Jesus didn't add that there, but this is why we study it. This is an act of loving God with all our mind. We're to love God with all our mind, soul, heart, and strength. And this is an exercise in loving God with all our mind and knowing God for who he really is. That's why we do it. Not to become a tadpole with a big head and no body, not to become, you know, intellectually elite. We do it because this is what we're commanded to do, and this is what eternal life is all about.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:46

About plumbing the depths of God. Amen. I sometimes fear that evangelicals in America have gotten bored with God and they think we need to move on to other things. And so rather than having these thoughts, engaging in the deep things of God and in in sermons and Bible studies, like, well, I really need to figure out how to not have stress at work.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:08

I really need to figure out how to relate better to my kids. Important conversations, but those don't replace what's primary, what's first, which is God. And a thing that I'm really concerned with, which is why I keep asking you the questions I do, which is how does systematic theology inform the way we live and do ministry? And this is something that Chris Morgan, you know, bequeathed to me when I was a PhD student, and might be something that I try to write one day, was he was recognizing there's a hole in systematic studies where they ask the qu the textual question, which is in the setting of a given proof text we're looking at for a given doctrine, how does that idea, that theology function rhetorically in that text? Yeah. Like so we go to a certain text as a proof text for the divinity of the son. Right. But like in the flow of thought in Romans or Philippians, right? What is Paul employing the divinity of the divine son for? Right. Is it to make a ethical point, a you know, a moral point? Well, that's ethical moral. Is it to make a pastoral point and a point? Whatever. So that's what I'm really keen on is really getting at the nitty-gritty of helping people to see that theology matters because even in the text, yeah, it has immediate payoff.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:23

Yeah, I told my students for years we want our exegetical theology to be the underpinnings of our systematic theology, so that exegetically the the point of the text is the point of what we're talking about. And it doesn't become a proof text. And answering that so what question, I mean, going from theology to to homiletics to preaching, you know, that's what I ask every week. So how does this help me when I wake up tomorrow morning? Yeah, uh, live my life, what I have to face, the struggles, the trials, because we have so much um intended effect from the scripture that's meant to apply to our lives and change us and make us more like Jesus. Um and so that's we need to be doing that kind of triage to to always be pressing forward in our ministries um those things that are of of the utmost importance. And and the Trinity's at the heart of that. Um the gospel.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:24

Well, thank you, brother, for your time to those listeners or listener early on here of this Bay Area Theology podcast who are interested in learning more about Pyrology, the doctrine of the Father, divine monarchy. You need to reach out to Pastor Dr. Reverend Ryan Rippey of Trinity Church in Benicia, up there in the forgotten north bay, but not forgotten. And uh be on the lookout for his books that are coming out through Baker, through McMillan. There's some hot stuff coming off the press. And maybe if you reach out to him, he'd get you that author discount. So there you go. Anyways, thank you for joining us, brother. Thanks for having me. Pleasure's been mine. Yeah, it's been with light.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:59

Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. If this conversation encouraged you, be sure to subscribe, follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone else who would benefit from it. You can find more episodes, resources, and information at Bayarea Theology.org. That's BayareaTheology.org. If you are interested in learning more about the Bayseed Collective or helping support the work that we are doing, go to Bayseed.org. That's B-A-Y-S-E-E-D.org. At Bay Area Theology, we believe that healthy ministry begins with healthy theology. Our hope is to cultivate thoughtful conversations that strengthen the church here in the Bay Area and beyond. This has been Bay Area Theology, Theology from the Bay for the Bay.