Okay, as we come back together, we would like to look at the issue of the Trinity biblically now in terms of the Old Testament and the New Testament. I hope what we've done in the last hour and the last hour last week is I hope you at least won some sense of the difficulties that the early church was going through. With that lack of a framework people were basically all over the place. Who is Jesus? How does he relate to the Father? Oftentimes here people on the Holy Spirit, he didn't even enter the conversation until very late. And some of the things that we would do and just think of it as natural just weren't even on the scope yet. And we need to appreciate that. What it does, again, as I put it, we started last week. I hope it makes the point that orthodoxy doesn't fall out of sky. It has to be one, it has to be beaten out. And then quite frankly, it has to be protected as well. The Trinity in the Old Testament, Romans 1, the introduction. We shouldn't come to the text of the Old Testament with the expectation of finding a fully articulated doctrine of Trinity expressed within its pages. Matter of fact, we don't find a full-fledged doctrine of Trinity even in the New Testament, much less the Old. And given the nature of progressive revelation, it's going to, I think, be natural for us to expect we're going to find more in the New Testament than in the Old, after all, in the New Testament we have the incarnation. In the New Testament we have Pentecost. Until those events, it's going to be very difficult to reveal much about the second and third persons of the Trinity, in any way that's comprehensible to the recipients of revelation. What I'm going to suggest, what we may expect to find in the Old Testament are hints, hints of a plurality within God, hints which go beyond simple monotheism, a simple oneness. To put it another way, we might expect to find some small evidence for complexity within God in the Old Testament. This brings us to Roman in rule two, Elohim. As I've entered at their page 72 of your outline, the divine name Elohim suggests that God is both signular, L, and complex Elohim at the same time. And at this point you want to take out your Bibles in turn to Genesis chapter 1. We're going to look at Genesis 1.26, but there's a whole package of these kinds of texts, and I've got the rest of them listed for you there as well, but we're going to argue it or look at it primarily in terms of Genesis 1.26. Where God says, let us make man in our image. The question is here, if we can answer this, who is the us, who is the our? We may have some insight into Elohim as well. To whom does us refer? What are the options? And I've got a whole bunch of options for you here. Well, it's been very common to deal with Elohim as a plural of majesty, that Elohim against the plural. It could be translated as gods, but what we have in implied in Elohim and what we have here in this text is a plural of majesty. And this is the tradition of Kyle in driver, you know, as the plural of majesty is in the queen saying, you know, we are not amused. But the plural of majesty, as in an earthly king, is a representational we. The monarch takes on the plural pronoun as the locus of collective will and power within the realm. In fact, when the sovereign says we have decided, he has an effect saying as the representative of the people, I have decided, or even the people have decided. And the fact is we have no precedent for this kind of articulation in the Old Testament. And it's difficult to imagine an analog to God here. Can't imagine God saying as the representative of, I have decided, seems to me there's a violation of God's sovereignty here. I'm going to suggest that the plural of majesty is not a good way of making sense of what's going on here. A second option, some folks, primarily from a rather critical point of view would say that what we have here is an original polytheistic reference. That Elohim as one of the deities is saying, hey, all you gods, let us make man in our image. And of course that proposal takes a rather dim view of biblical inspiration and truthfulness. And I think this is the anti-mythological in anti-polytheistic thrust of Genesis 1. Genesis 1 openly, if you read it in the Hebrew text, it takes up many of the names of the gods in the ancient Near East and relativizes them. There's a very anti-mythological thrust there. A third option is that God is speaking to the heavenly courts or the angelic hosts. This is probably the most common interpretation today. And in fact, it was the interpretation that was favored in Jewish interpretive circles after the time of the first century, the time of Philo Xandria. Goen in his theological commentary on Genesis argues that from chapter 3, verse 22, where we have a similar statement, man has become like us knowing good and evil, that 126 is an obvious reference to the angels. That God is going to create a creature who bears similarities to both God and the members of the angelic courts. And goen their sites, 1 Kings 22, verses 19 to 22, and Job 1, verse 6 through 2, 6, as examples of God consulting the angelic court. However, most, let me take that back. Many Old Testament exegetes would claim that there is no angelic counsel anywhere in the Old Testament. And I mention those two texts to you so that you can turn there yourself and come to your own conclusion. People like Lupold and Alders are insistent that no such counsel takes place in Scripture, and that neither the 1 Kings 22 text or the Job 1 text indicate any agreement between God and the angelic host. Thus the Bible does not depict the angels as fulfilling an advisory role. What angels do throughout Scripture is they receive and mediate. And we may have an opportunity before the semester is out to look at the angels there in the outline if we have the time we will look at them. So the argument here, and this is A, under 3, that angels do not advise what they do is receive revelation and the immediate revelation. Well, I think that's a good argument, and to it I would add B, C, and D, and let's do that very quickly. B here's this, the possessive hour in verse 26 as in our image should refer to the same person as the us, let us. Does that make sense? That if Elohim says, let us make man in our image, both the pronoun us, and our should refer to the same reality. Well, God is created, excuse me, man is created in God's image, not in the image of God and the heavenly host. There's no biblical material anywhere which suggests that we are made in an angelic image. Third here are C, only God is the subject of all uses of the Hebrew verbs make usah and create barah in the account of creation. And again, let us make if the angels are making that seems to violate the reality of God as the subject of those verbs elsewhere. And D, in Genesis 11 verse 7, we're told, let us, or God says, let us go down and confuse. So we have a very similar construction, let us, but only God is said to go down. We don't have an angelic host going down and confusing. So I think that the, our third option here, a heavenly court, an angelic host has some problems. A fourth option is that we have a statement here of self deliberation, a statement of self excertation or self encouragement. Not to trivialize it, but just so that we can get some idea of what's going on here. You lay in bed in the morning and you say to yourself, okay, let's get out of bed. So it's a self encouragement, a self deliberation. When I'm notes that both the idea of a heavenly court and the idea of self deliberation are, rather than are compatible with Hebrew monotheism, yet both lack sufficient parallels within the biblical materials to compel agreement. Both of them are possible, but there's nothing really compelling. It says this is especially true of the latter, the idea of self deliberation. And he suggests that it should be accepted only as a last resort. If all your other options fail, you might want to come back to this one as a possibility. Fifth, what is Winham's own suggestion? I think we'll agree that he should have gone back to the self deliberation, but his own suggestion is this. His own thesis is really close to the heavenly court idea, but within a wrinkle. 126 is not advisory, excuse me, there's a Theologian making words up again. 126 is not advisory, it's proclamatory. The statement is a divine announcement to the angels, drawing attention to the angelic hosts of the masterstroke of creation. The problem is the syntax doesn't make sense of that, it doesn't function that way. He does use Job 38 verses 4 and 7 as a parallel here. When I laid the foundation of the earth, all the sons of God shouted for joy with the idea of proclamation. I'm going to skip number 6, John's sale hammer suggestion because it's a little hard to get a hold of. We'd probably end up in more questions than anything, and it does not drive us forward. I simply had it there for comprehensiveness. So I'm going to go to 7 here, a trinitarian reference. Traditionally, in the longest history of the church, the idea is that we have a trinitarian reference here. Now all would agree, I think, that the human author did not intend was not cognizant of anything approaching what we would after a tritullian call the trinity. I hope we could admit that right up front. Now I could say this because of this. When Moses was cognizant of the trinity, did mean the trinity when he wrote this, he should have told us. He should have and would have declared it. I take it on principle that the biblical authors were not in the business of hiding truth. They were in the business of revealing truth, the truth as it was put to them. So we come finally to our suggestion. I think the best approach here is something like this. From the perspective of the biblical author, something like self-deliberation is in view here. I say like because it seems like there's something more than, let's get out of bed. But happily, fortunately, we don't have to make a decision here. We don't have to struggle with, even though it's fair to ask the question, important ask the question. We don't have to answer finally what did Moses mean in his original context. Because finally, we want to read Genesis 1 in a Christian context, in the context of New Testament revelation. In light of the larger realities of the biblical text, the text at the level of what it's called the fuller sense, the Old Testament informed by the New Testament. The Elohim of Genesis 1.26 is a plural. It is the declaration of a complex reality. And what I'm saying here about Elohim also holds for the plural pronouns of Genesis 1.26 and following. The Father is addressing the Spirit who hovers upon the face of the waters, verse 3. The Father is addressing the Son who is equally active in creation. And I take that from Genesis 1, excuse me, John 1, verses 1 through 3. But clearly, that is beyond the horizon of the writer. That's only in the context of the entirety of scripture. Loophold here, I think, said it well. He said this. The doctrine of the Trinity is not intended or taught in Genesis 1. But finally, it's only the reality of the Trinitarian God which satisfies and explains the text. Or as Luther would put it many years before, quote, what is first presented more or less stark, difficult, and obscure. Christ has all made manifest and clearly commanded us to preach, end quote. And Bibi Warfield put this in an analogy which I think is really very helpful. He said, when you turn out of light in a dark room after you've been stumbling around, and you see the furniture for the first time, it doesn't mean that the furniture wasn't there before. But now, when the lights are on, you can make sense of what you've been bumping into in the dark. But it's only when the lights are on. It's only going to be in the context of the New Testament that these hints are something more than hints. What I'm suggesting, on their own terms, they may be just hints. Well, let's look very quickly at the other texts that are related here. And Lord God said, the man has become like one of us. This text is interesting like the Genesis 1 text because both of these were texts that the Hebrew commentaries, the book of Jubilee's, the Jerusalem Talmud and others. Both of them discussed these texts. Philo, Alexandria discussed them, many, many others did. And what's interesting in these is that these texts either get omitted or they get retranslated so that they're singular. The pronouns are singular, all of a sudden the verbs are singular. And all of which suggests that the rabbis, just before the time of Christ, were embarrassed by the hinted plurality of God in these sorts of texts. They didn't know what to do with it with them, so they intentionally tried to clean them up. They intentionally tried to rehabilitate them towards what they would consider an acceptable monotheism. Third text here, Genesis 11.7, we've already mentioned this, God said, let us go down and confuse their language. And again, only God goes down here. Genesis 18, this is Abraham and three men at memory. Yahweh appeared to Abraham at memory, but when Abraham looks up, he sees three men. And when he speaks, he addresses all three of them as my Yahweh, see verse three there. There's interesting in that text is that there's an alternation between plural pronouns and singular pronouns, and it's altogether confusing whether there's one or three. Genesis 19, two angels appeared to Lot, and he calls them Yahweh in the singular. And see Isaiah 6, 8 there, more veiled reference, whom shall I send and who will go for us? So you have something of a redounding back to Genesis 1. Now, does all that add up to anything? No, it's a hint. Nothing more. By the way, I'm not trying to create an accumulative case here. I don't think that hint plus hint plus hint equals Trinity. I think hint plus hint plus hint equals hint. Okay, you all see what I'm saying here? Room number three, the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is referred to over 50 times in the Old Testament, but oftentimes the angel of the Lord is a very confusing and ambiguous reference. Oftentimes there appears to be a virtual identification of the angel of the Lord and Yahweh. Other times there's a very clear distinction between them. God speaks to the angel of the Lord in Exodus 23 and in Exodus 32. He speaks of him in those two texts. He speaks to him in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 and the angel speaks to God in Zechariah 12.1. But at other places there seems to be a confusion. For instance, in Genesis 31, verses 11 through 13, the angel says, I am the God of Bethel. And in Genesis 32, verses 24 through 30, Jacob wrestles with one who is identified as the angel of the Lord and then says at the end of this event, I have seen God face to face and in Genesis 48, verses 15 and 16, the angel was identified with God in the action of redemption. Fact of the matter is, there's a lot of ambiguity here. One more example here, judges 6 verses 11 through 14. In verse 12, the angel says, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior, intimating that Yahweh is not the angel. But then in verses 14 and 15, Gideon refers to the angel as Yahweh. So ambiguous right there within the text. Now since the 3rd century, it's been common within the church to think of the angel of the Lord as a pre-incarnant Christophony, that is to say an appearance of Christ before the incarnation. If that's true, it's inferential. It seems to me the evidence for such a conclusion is sketchy and somewhat inferential. But certainly, certainly possible. Many people have simply reasoned backwards here from John chapter 1 verse 18, which suggests, well in the text says, no man has seen God but God the one and only has made him known. And the idea from that text is that the very ministry of one of the fundamental ministries of the Son is to manifest the Father. So if we have a visible presentation of God, then we have a Christophony as a deduction that makes good sense. But in terms of what the Old Testament actually does with the angel of the Lord, the whole thing is rather ambiguous. Room number 4. What does it mean to say that God is one? We would not be wrong to say that hebraic religion or the Old Testament religion was strongly monotheistic. The Hebrews were warned over and over that they were to have no other gods besides Yahweh. You can see here, of course, Exodus chapter 20 verse 3, the first commandment. Millenarianson has recently asked regarding this commandment whether it should be taken as an ontological statement, that is to say a statement that there is only one God, or as no more than a command that is real not share her confessional allegiances between Yahweh and anyone else. And noting the recurrent synergistic tendency in Israel to go running after other gods, Ericson suggests that the first commandment should not be understand as a commandment, excuse me, he says that the commandment should not be understood as an ontological statement, but rather as a commandment against syncretism. In other words, it should not be overexaggerated into a statement of absolute oneness. And he says this, this command does not tell us anything about the nature or makeup of God. And you'll see where Ericson's going here in a minute, hang on, he's not a polytheist. But surely the Shema, Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 and 5, constitutes a clear claim of monotheism. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your hearts and with all your soul and with all your strength. From that text we might conclude that Israel is not to divide her confessional allegiances between Yahweh and other deities, because there are no other deities. Yahweh is the only God. Yes, Ericson replies, but just what is the nature of this oneness? And he points out the fact that there are two words in Hebrew for one. One is Yaheed, this is a word which means unique. The one and only. It's often used in the context of an only child, Proverbs 4, 3, Amos 8, 10, Zechariah 12, 10. This is oneness in the sense of one spoken of as the only member of its class, the unique singular one and only. The other word is Ahad, and it's also a typical word for one, but rather than unique, it really means something more like unified. It's derived from a verb which has the idea of collecting one's thoughts, of unifying one's thoughts. When we derive a numerical, a number from Ahad, we don't get so much a singularity, one as we would with Yaheed, but we get a unity, a complex one. This is the word that's used, for example, in Genesis 2, 24. A man will leave his wife, excuse me, leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and they will become, one flesh, and Ahad is one flesh here. We could take that out of context and make a nice little bit of film, a man shall leave his wife. The unity that's spoken out here is not a uniqueness, it is rather a unified reality, one flesh, union rather than aloneness. And Ericsson points out that it is Ahad that we have in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 and 5. Now, does this mean that Yahweh is a unified complexity, rather than the only one that's class? For as Ericsson himself points out, both words for oneness are employed in Zechariah 49, listen to Zechariah 49. On that day there will be one Ahad, God, one Ahad Lord, rather Yahweh, and his name the only Yaheed one. So think your way through that. Right there you have the two together. Fact is these kinds of discussions can be far overdone, and you have to look at the context rather than simply saying this word always means because it's almost never the case that this word always means. Whenever people use that for you in Greek and in the biblical terms always be suspicious that approach towards biblical languages is today or so to be very problematic. You have to look at the context, how our words use. But again, we may have a hint, nothing more than a hint. Room number 5, I'll turn the page to find out what it is. Personification of personal extension. The Old Testament often speaks of the extension of God's power or character into creation in terms of personification. Let me explain what's going on here. Let's do this with wisdom. Particularly in the wisdom literature of the Psalms, the Proverbs, the ecclesiastes. God's wisdom is sometimes spoken of almost as if it were a person, someone other than God. Someone who has an existence apart from yet dependent upon God, thus the divine wisdom is active in creation. We're even told in Proverbs 1 that wisdom fashions the world and God's word. God's word or discourse also takes on that same kind of personification. Even though it's dependent upon God, it almost becomes something other than something independent of Him even though it originates from Him. The word of God is portrayed as going forth into the world, confronting men and women with the will and purpose of God, bringing guidance, judgment and salvation. See Psalm 119, verse 89, Psalm 147, verses 15-20. Third, the spirit of God, or heaven you're outlined there, the Rua Yahweh, that just means the spirit of God. The Old Testament uses the phrase the spirit of God to refer to God's presence and power within the creation. The spirit is portrayed as being present in the expected Messiah in Isaiah 42, as being the agent of the new creation in Ezekiel 36. The spirit of God is also used in terms of God empowering people for service. Judges 6 speaks of the spirit, dining Gideon, almost as you might put on clothing. And that's where we read of the spirit rushing upon Samson in Judges 14 and rushing upon Saul in 1 Samuel 10. And again, there's this indication that this spirit is somehow God yet not God. Now, what do we make of these personifications? Look at D here. Do these add up to a trinity? Well, aside from the spirit, no. At least they don't add up to a trinity in the context of the Old Testament revelation taken by itself. The fact of the matter is that the biblical notion of a person doesn't merely think of a person in abstraction. You know, me as a physical entity standing here in front of you, a biblical person is a person with all their powers, all of their extensions into the world. One's words, one's works, and all the rest belong to the person in a very real sense. The power of God is God, the word of God is God and can't be separated from Him. It's only in terms of the New Testament that things like God's wisdom, God's word, and God's spirit will then be relevant to the trinity in question. But we need to notice here that those three don't line up with Father's Son and the Spirit. The word does align with the Son, but both the wisdom and the Spirit align with the Spirit. Well, conclusion. What do we make of these lines of evidence? Trinitarianism? No, not in any explicit way. You can't get there from the materials that we've looked at. The evidence is too vague, too ambiguous, too anecdotal, too occasional, you've got to read it in. It would just plain be ice to Jesus. Well, if not Trinitarianism, Unitarianism? If not a three-part God, a one-part, a simple one-dimensional understanding of God? No, not that either. What's hinted at here is that the Old Testament understanding of God is probably too dynamic for a Unitarian view, but just what more beyond Unitarianism it does not tell us. Does that make sense, folks? Again, we have a suggestive, provocative series of hints. Maybe the most one can draw off the Old Testament materials is the provocative suggestion of a complex monotheism. A one who can also be more than mere one or merely one. And this complex monotheism will be further explicated in the history of redemption as God moves towards the crisis events of the incarnation of the second person and the panic-cost event of the Holy Spirit. Before we move to the Trinity in the New Testament, let me pause and see what questions you might have on what we just did here. In the Shema, Ahad, the Unified. I didn't speak loud enough to you as you're not speaking loud enough to me now. In the Shema, we have Deuteronomy 6th, we have Ahad. Well, the Trinity in the New Testament, and here you want to take out your little outline. First of all, Roman No. 1 introduction. Oh, and I better get the outline too. The New Testament material concerning the Trinity is clearer and more direct than that of the Old Testament. If it weren't, we should not be talking about Trinity in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, we must admit that we still don't get a nice, neat, clear-cut statement on the Trinity. There is little along the lines of a reflection upon the Trinity as such even in the New Testament. Rather, it appears that a trinitarian understanding of God is merely assumed, almost as if it had always been the case. What I'm suggesting here is there doesn't seem to be any place where the New Testament goes, hey, Trinity! God is, and then you get an explanation of Father, Son, and Spirit. It merely appears to be assumed, and this assumption itself appears to be older than, more primitive than the writing of the New Testament materials. After all, the New Testament will pick up Creed-like statements, Creed-like slogans, statements, bumper stickers, lack of a better term, which align the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in short, catchy statements, statements which suggest that these had been around, even before Paul, even before the writers of the Gospels, and they're now included as being part and parcel of the early Christian consciousness. Let's look at some of these in Roman numeral two, trinitarian formulas. I just want to read you a few of them here, Matthew 28 and 19. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to exegy these, I just think that you can let yourself, with these kinds of associations, when the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are put in this kind of relationship with one another, what's being said? What's being intimated? What's true of the Father is somehow true of the Son, and what's true of the Father and the Son is also true of the Spirit. There's that kind of verbal association here. Second Thessalonians 2, 13 and 14, but we ought always to thank God for you, brothers. Loved to the Lord, excuse me, because from the beginning, God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 12 verses 4 through 6, there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of workings, but the same God. But the same God works, all of them, in all men. Interesting parallelism in this text, you'll notice that gifts, service, and working, those are kind of synonymous terms. If you look up one, they'll say, you know, see the other two, and with that same kind of closeness, that kind of association, we have the Spirit, the Lord, I.e. Jesus, and God. I'm not going to read you the others, you see them there under D. The point of D is simply to make, to draw your attention, the fact that these three are not alone. There's actually an awful lot of these trinitarian formulas in the biblical materials, in the New Testament materials. Well, let's go to the D.D. of the Son, Romans 3. One way to speak of the D.D. of Christ is to look at His works. We can close this door now. Are you sure? If you look cold, Mark, if she starts a shiver, okay? It's cold, we shut the door then, please. We're just trying to keep you awake. You want to get too warm? Okay, this is true. I think you're better than me standing on my hands and I'll just open the door and freeze you all out, keep you awake. One way of getting at the, or number of ways of getting at the D.D. of Jesus Christ is to look at the things that He does, to know that He does God things. But what we want to start here is that He's spoken of in God terms. He carries or bears divine names. And the first thing we want to look at here is the name Lord. Now, I could over-tax this right here at the beginning by drawing associations between Yahweh in the Old Testament, how that gets turned into Adonai, how that gets turned into Kurios. I don't have to any of that because the fact of the matter is the word Lord Kurios in the New Testament was a very common word. It was a very common term. It meant no more than sir. You might call your boss Kurios. As your teacher you might call me Kurios. It was simply a term that you would use of politeness. It was a term you might use of a superior in the workplace. So no big deal. There are lots of Lords. The question is Lord over what? To what does one's Lordship extend? When the authors of the New Testament spoke of Jesus as Lord and they said that's a crucial statement to make about Him. They were saying that He is Lord of all. He is Lord of history. He is Lord of creation. He is Lord of the nations. In other words, when we say that Jesus is Lord, we mean in the same sense that Yahweh is Lord. And when we say that Yahweh is Lord, we mean that He is the only Lord. The only one to whom we owe loyalty. God's Lordship, Yahweh's Lordship, Jesus's Lordship calls up the First Commandment. Have no other gods, have no other loyalties. When Jesus exercises, we should say thus Jesus exercises an authority and a sovereignty which is appropriate only to God. I am just going to read one verse here. Well, two verses. Philippians 2 verses 10 and 11. By the way, references there should be changed. Instead of Mark 1237, it should be Mark 12, 36 and 37. Read both verses and then Philippians 2 verses 10 and 11. I got two brief there with the references. But Philippians 2 verses 10 and 11 says this. Then at the name of Jesus, this is talking about in the eschaton. Then at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Many uses of the word Kurios don't mean anything like that kind of weight. Even sometimes when they are applied to Jesus, but certainly here in the Philippians text and many others. We are talking about a kind of Lordship which is a Lordship like onto that of Yahweh, a Lordship over all reality. Second divine name, Son of Man, in here I have given you Matthew 26, 64. We won't change that one. In Psalm 8, Son of Man is applied to any human being. What is man or the Son of Man? But in Daniel chapter 7, verse 13, the phrase appears or refers to a heavenly man, a heavenly person, an ideal covenant representative, one who will come at the end of the age full of power and authority. It is the coming Messiah. As it is used in the gospel record by Jesus Himself by the way to refer to Himself, it follows the use of Daniel. For by the first century the phrase Son of Man was something of a standard reference for the Messiah. In Jesus' will you, it was actually Jesus' favorite self designation. He will call Himself the Son of Man. You see that particular in the Sonotic record. Third, God. This afternoon it was, I was having this little joke on myself or a game with myself because I looked at my notes real quick. In order that I had about a paragraph of things to say under all of these except for God. Nothing is like this is self evident. Well, when we look at the text, we are going to see they are pretty much self evident. John 1, 1. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. What is interesting here, of course, if anyone, if you have any friends or have had any acquaintances with Jehovah's Witnesses or other cultists, they might make the point that, or want to make the point that what we have here in John 1, 1 is not a statement about the word Jesus being God. But you will have, Jehovah's Witnesses will put it this way, the word was a God, right? But what is interesting here is that John in his gospel will often leave out the definite article in reference to what is called a definite noun like God. Go to verse 6, he will do the same thing. Try reading verse 6 as a God, or verse 12, or verse 13, or verse 18. In all of these you will have theos used without an article, and quite frankly the argument turns into a kind of absurd thing here. Well, so much so, see if this makes sense to you. In order to read out the Jehovah's Witness argument that there are many gods in Jesus is one you have to read it in in the first place. It doesn't leave out at you especially in the context of anything, any kind of commitment to Hebrew monotheism. Then the Jehovah's Witness argument is very, very much a convenience question. There is no definite article, it's not the God. And the suggestion of the Jehovah's Witnesses is that it is a God. In other words, there are many gods in Jesus is only one of them. But the fact of the matter is that the Hebrew text does not need the definite article in order to refer to a single, a single reality. And you see that because it's common for John to do that. He does not always include the definite article. And you see that in verses 6, 12, 13, 18, and many other places. If you start reading those texts with the Jehovah's Witness idea, they actually become fairly absurd. Another text here is verse 18. No man has seen God. But God, the one and only, the monogonese, the unique one, the natural sun, has made him known. John 2028, that is Thomas's confession. This is where Jesus comes in, Thomas says, my Lord and my God. And then Hebrews 1.8, Hebrews 1.8, I'm trying to remember what this one is. I have blanked. God said to my Lord, is it? Go back up. What's the introduction to it? But how the sun, he says, where the sun is identified as God. Yes. That one is, by the way, a reference back to Psalm 102. Our fourth one here, the son of God. This phrase, this title for Jesus, is used by the heavenly voice, that is baptism in Mark 1. It's used at the transfiguration in Mark 9. It's used by Peter in Peter's confession, excuse me, in Matthew 16, 16. And after that confession, that Jesus replies on this rock, I take it, it's on this confession, that he is the son of God. That Jesus will build his church, as I see it. It's used of the demons in Mark 5, and it's used by the centurion in Mark 15. It's interesting that in John's Gospel, only Jesus is the son of God. Only Jesus is, his term is monogenase. The old King James said, only begotten. The only one, a good English term for this would be unique, or the natural son. Our sonship comes to us by way of regeneration, by way of adoption. We are the children of God, yes, but by adoption. Jesus is the son of God, by way of natural relationship, by way of natural sonship. Well, now that we have divine names applied to Jesus, we also see that Jesus possesses the characteristics or attributes of God, and here where it be. We're going to speed up here just a little bit. He possesses grace, truth and glory. We see here John 114 and 17. John 114 says, what, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, glory as of, and only begotten. There's monogenase again, full of grace and truth. The son possesses eternality. See, Colossians 1. If you want the text here on Jesus, it's Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, and John 1. You know, you can kind of put them up for anything. You go to the introduction of the Gospel of John, you go to the first chapter of Hebrews, and remember the issue of Hebrews. Jesus is superior too. So the introduction there is going to be rather important, and Colossians 1 as well. And third here, immutability. And again, note the proof text I've given you. Hebrews 1, verses 11 and 12. Now the Hebrews text is interesting here, because it's not a statement about immutability, per se. Remember our discussion of that attribute. It's an affirmation of his, of Christ's sovereignty. His constancy and his faithfulness. Remember this text? Jesus the same yesterday, today, and forever. All of that stuff, right? However, it is legitimate to contend that there must be an ontological condition for a moral characteristic. So if he is constant, if he's trustworthy, if he's faithful, if he never changes. If that's what's being said, then we can extend that. Carefully, but I think legitimately, into a statement of immutability. Does that make sense, folks? Finally, we're done finally. See, Jesus does the work of God. We're going to have a finally that would be D. Jesus does the work of God. There are X, which only God can perform. There are things that only God can do. Go back here to... To affirmation says so to your logical principle. Only God can save. Jesus saves. Jesus is God. Since Jesus performs the works of God, He is God. And again, look at the text I've given you. It's basically John 1, verses 3 through 12. Colossians 1, verses 14 through 20. And Hebrews 1, verses 2 through 10. He does the work of creation. John 1, 3 tells us that. He's involved in the providence of God. He is the Redeemer, and He is even the consummator. And finally, in D here, Jesus receives the worship that is due. God. Only God is to be worshipped again. It goes right back to Athanasius. Scripture is clear that only God is worthy of worship. If you worship Him, pay attention to what you're saying. You are claiming His deity. The angel's worship to Him at His birth. The blind man and Thomas, among others, worshiped Him in His earthly ministry. And all will bow before Him in worship in the eschaton. And again, look at Philippians 2, verses 10 and 11. I'm not going to be able to finish this tonight, but I would like to at least get a start on the deity of the Holy Spirit. And this is particularly where I have reduced some things, and changed some things around a little bit so that people who have taken Spirit Church last things are those who are presently taking it won't be bored completely out of their heads. And I see Nikki in the back there. She's in that course right now. First thing we want to do here is talk a little bit about the difficulties in thinking about and studying the Spirit. In fact, the matter is, early Christians did not know what to do with the Holy Spirit. It's not going to be until the Council of Constantinople, 3-1, that the Spirit will come into anything like His own. Theologically. And even then, people like Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea, when they turned their attention to the Spirit, they didn't do much more than cite the Trinitarian formulas. And they would say, whatever is true of the Son is also true of the Spirit. And by and large, that was the method in the early Church. The debate was, who is Jesus? The debate was, how does He relate to the Father? And once they figured that out, they just said, oh yeah, and the Spirit too. Whatever is true of Jesus, vis-a-vis God, is also true of the Spirit. So the Spirit was not the battlefield. He was the Johnny come lately. As I put it in Spirit Church last things, he was the Cinderella. The other sisters went to the ball and got left home. In fact, as the Patricia writers were even hesitant to speak of Him as God. And you can see that in the statement on the doctrine of Trinity that came out of Constantinople. In that document, the Holy Spirit was not described as God. He was described this way. Listen to it. The Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son. Certainly, it's very clear here that the Spirit is to be given the same dignity as the Father and the Son. But notice that the word God was not used in reference to the Spirit. Even Orthodox theologians, people like Irenaeus of Lyon, who in other ways is very much the champion of Orthodoxy. When He comes to Spirit, He's at a loss for words. He will used for notes hearing formulas. But whenever He speaks directly about the Spirit, He will tend to speak of Him as being somewhat impersonal. His favorite phrase for the Spirit is the divine wisdom. Question is, why were things so difficult for the early Church's reflection concerning the Holy Spirit? We can cite a number of reasons here. We'll be those very quickly. First of all, we have far less revelation in the Bible regarding the person and the work of the Spirit than we have of either the Father or the Son. And that's largely due to too the nature of the Spirit's work. While He is the member of the Trinity through whom God lives in us, after all the Spirit indwells us, even though He's the member of the Trinity that brings God's power and person to bear upon us, His primary work is not about Him. His primary work is to apply and complete the work of the Father and the Son. During the present era, the Spirit performs the ministry of serving the Father and the Son and carrying out their will. In John 1426, Jesus tells us that the Father will send the Spirit in Jesus' name. There is a kind of subordination that we see in the Trinity. It introduces you to some of that. But it's not an ontological subordination, the kind of thing we saw in origin. So that God, the Father, is God big G. God, the Son, is God a little bit G. And God, the Son, well, we won't use G with Him at all. That was origin. We do see a subordination, but it is an historical subordination. The Father sends the Son and the Son then sends the Spirit. What we'll talk about, we won't get into it this week, there is a voluntary subordination among the members of the Trinity. In John 14, we're reminded of the Spirit of the Son's earthly ministry, of one which is subordinate to the Father. The Father sends the Son to affect redemption, the redemption promised by the Father, and the Son comes and does the will of the Father. Just so, the Son now sends the Spirit to complete and apply the redemption worn by the Son. All of this is meant to suggest, or meant to make the point, that the ministry of the Spirit is to declare and glorify Jesus and see John 16-14 here. I can put it this way, maybe. The Spirit does not draw attention to Himself. His ministry is to draw attention to Jesus, and that's the reason that Sinclair Ferguson in his book speaks of the Spirit as the shy member of the Trinity. Third difficulty here, and it's the problem of how He's referred to, or I put it there, the absence of concrete imagery. We know what fathers and sons are. We have analogues that tell us. We don't have any problem. When you call someone a son, you know what they are. When you call someone a father, you know what they are. But what's a Spirit? And what's a Holy Spirit? We don't have the analogues. We don't have a nice neat thing that tells you. And to complicate all of this, a lot of traditional translations and some still, not only will it come with Holy Spirit, it comes with Holy Ghost. You know, it gets vaguer and vaguer and vaguer. Fourth, the modern controversy about the Spirit. Since the 1960s, the doctrine of the Spirit has been somewhat controversial. It's not that people have denied the doctrine of the Spirit, but rather some people have so emphasized the Spirit, almost out of proportion out of his biblical revelation, that it has moved others to kind of respond or react in certain ways. What I mean here is that, frankly, we're talking about the Charismatic Revival. And the way some Charismatic have talked about the Spirit, and I'm not demeaning them at all because it's a reactionary problem. The way they have spoke of the Spirit has led some other folks to kind of respond in such a way that if we talk about the Spirit too much, people might confuse us for Charismatics, and they don't want to be thought of as Charismatics. And again, that's not a Charismatic problem, that's an anti, it's almost an anti- Charismatic problem. There's a kind of stigma that's come along with that. Well, we can get a star here on the personhood of the Holy Spirit, B. It seems to me there are three necessary tasks in talking about a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Not only must we, like we did for the Sun, talk about his works and his deity, we must talk as well about his personhood. We don't have a problem with the personhood of Jesus. He could be touched, he could be felt, he could be talked to, he could be reported, but from the very beginning of the Church, people have spoken of the Spirit in impersonal terms. For many, he was an impersonal force, an endowment of power or blessing. He was the divine wisdom, the divine grace, those kinds of things. And such impersonal constructions would militate automatically against thinking of him as God. So the first thing we have to do is think of a misperson. The first thing we have to do, it seems to me, is establish the Holy Spirit as person before we can speak of him as deity. Now, I've got to admit, much of this, when we talk about the Spirit's personhood, much of this is inferential. And again, I think the reason is that the Spirit is not about the business of drawing attention to himself. His very job is to stand in the background. And I guess I am somewhat arguing here against some things that have gone on in the Charismatic tradition. For instance, it does seem to me that we have very few warrants for praying to the Spirit. Jesus himself tells us to pray to the Father. I think praying to the Father is not alienating the Spirit at all because we pray to the Father by the power of the Spirit, by means of the Spirit. But his job is not, again, his job is kind of where a sign that says, look at the other guy, look at Jesus. So much of this is inferential. For example, we have passages in the New Testament in which the Spirit's work is closely associated with various other persons. And done in such a way that as it's natural to think of those persons as persons, it's also a natural to think of him as persons. Does that make sense? Did we just said that? Well, read number one there. The work of a Spirit is associated with other persons, such that it's natural to think of the Spirit as a person as well. And the first example we have here is the issue of the paraclete. Now, the word paracletos can be translated a number of ways. Counselor, advocate, helper, advisor, defender, many ways. And this word is applied to the Holy Spirit in John 14, 16, John 15, 26, and John 16, 7. And in each of these texts, it's obvious that something other than an abstract impersonal influence is referred to. Jesus speaks of himself as the paraclete in 1 John 21. But most significantly, Jesus says in John 14, 16, that the Father will give the disciples another paraclete after Jesus ascends to the Father. He actually says, Alon paracleton, another paraclete. Alon means another of the same kind. What Jesus says is that the Father will send another one like me, someone who is like me. In view of Jesus' statements linking the Spirit's coming to His going, see 16, 7 here, I think it's clear that the Spirit will come as the presence and power of God within Jesus' disciples. And thus, the Spirit's going to come to fulfill the role, to complete and apply the ministry of Jesus after Jesus ascends to the Father. Be in our discussion here glorification. In John 17, 4, Jesus tells us that during His earthly ministry, He glorified the Father. Similarly, in 1614, He tells us that the Spirit will glorify Him, for He will take what His mind and declare it to you. Again, notice the very typical ministry of the Spirit. His job is to point to Christ. Third here are C, texts in which the Holy Spirit is linked with both the Father and the Son. Again, I want to go back to those trinitarian formulas here, but just to make the point, just as we think of the Father as personal and the Son as personal, when we have the Spirit put in together with Him, it's just plain natural. It's normal to think of Him personally as well. Best known here, the baptismal formulation of Matthew 28, 19, and the benediction of 2nd Corinthians 3, 14, but we could add all the other three part formulas. The point here is that all of these texts associate the Spirit with the Father and the Son in ministry. And as I think of the Father's personal, Son's personal, natural, as a matter of fact, not a natural thing of the Spirit as personal, but with the unnatural to think of Him in any other way. Two of these we can add the baptism of John, excuse me, the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3, 16, where you have the Father, Son, and Spirit all in attendance, again, close association. D, passages which link the Spirit, now, not with God, not with the Father and the Son, but with human beings. And as in these passages, it's natural to think of human beings as persons, it's also natural to think of the Spirit personally. One example here, the letter from the apostles and elders at Jerusalem to the church at Antioch contained this expression. This is Acts 15, verse 28. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things. This coordination of the Spirit's work with the work of Christian leaders who are persons seems to make sense in the assumption that He's a person, and if I could put it this way, seems to make little sense on the assumption that He is not a person, seems almost to be incoherent. Well, let's look at number two here, the possesses characteristics that only a person has, and we'll finish this up and we'll break for this evening. The Holy Spirit possesses intelligence, the Holy Spirit possesses knowledge. In John 1426, the Spirit will teach the disciples and remind them of Jesus' words. John 1613, he will guide the disciples into truth, he will speak to them. John 15 verses 26 through 27, the Spirit will testify concerning Jesus, and then 1 Corinthians 2 verses 10 and 11. The Spirit knows Jesus and reveals Him. Interestingly, that knowing and Scripture is never the mere possession and retention of data. They don't think in terms of computers like we do, knowledge storage centers. Knowledge is always an intimate personal function, it's always a relationship. Second or B in your outline there will. The Holy Spirit has a will in 1 Corinthians 12, 11. He bestows spiritual gifts on people as He determines. See emotions in Ephesians 4 verse 30, Paul warns believers against their sins which grieve the Holy Spirit. D here, he can be affected as a person is affected. In effect, he has personal responses. X, 5 verses 3 and 4, Ananias and Sephira lied to the Spirit. Lying to the Spirit is lying to God. We'll see that next week. Ephesians 4, 30 again, grieving the Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5, 19. Paul speaks of our sin which that quenches the Spirit. X, 7, 51. Stephen accuses his adversaries of resisting the Spirit. Finally, E here. The Spirit engages in moral actions and ministries which can be performed only by a person. Teaching, regenerating, searching, speaking, interceding, commanding, testifying, guiding, illuminating, revealing. And as Paul puts it in Romans 8, pray the Spirit praise for believers. That's Romans 8, 26. Then we might just cite John 16, 8 where John tells us that the Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.