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Sam is going to bring the Q&A. Just before we begin the Q&A, 
I just wanted to express thanks to all three of our speakers. 
Thank you, Drs. Dolezal and Renahan, and Pastor 
Butler for the good words that you brought us on the doctrine 
of God. What a great time and what a good experience to have, 
to take in the knowledge of our God, to learn more, to grow in 
the grace and in the knowledge of our precious Savior. I wanted 
to extend thanks to everybody who organized and participated 
in the organizing, the setup, the work, the moving things around, 
the getting the The Food Ready, thank you to everyone. Those 
who are not here, if someone here could extend that thanks. 
It takes a lot of people to put these things together, so a lot 
of thanks to all of you who were able to participate and help. 
And thanks to all of you who attended. You don't really have 
a conference without people who attended, so thank you for registering, 
thank you for showing up, and thank you for your attention 
as the men brought truth to us. So we'll begin the question and 
answer now, and this is always a good change of the rhythm of 
a conference. We've taken in a lot of material, we've learned 
a lot about God, and now we can sort of move into the answering 
of our own curiosities and questions that perhaps were sparked during 
the course of the various lectures. The format is simple. I've got 
the app in front of me with the most popular from the top down 
to the bottom. Perhaps as they're answering 
some questions, I'll just quickly scroll. If one is similar to 
another one, then I may skip it. If your question is not asked 
by me, that doesn't mean it's a bad question. It could be bad 
for a number of other reasons. Thank you for submitting your 
questions. This is great, so let's move into it. Let's hear 
from our brothers on these theological questions. The first one I'm 
going to ask is this, and it's directed to Dr. Dolezal. But hey, the other two can answer. 
In session three, Dolezal used the illustration of combing his 
hair as an example of self-sufficiency. To which hairs was he referring? Pass. Good answer. Good answer. I did once, long 
ago. Okay, second question. If God doesn't have emotions, 
how can we grieve the Holy Spirit? Sam wrote a book on this. Not exactly, but. Can we grieve 
the Holy Spirit? There's a theologian from the 
early 1600s named Lancelot Andrews, who gives the best answer to 
this question. And it will be in the Free Grace 
podcast. Right, we already dealt with 
it. But it's a pertinent question for this conference, so let's 
answer it here again. Lancelot Andrews points out that 
when we ask the question, can we grieve the Holy Spirit, we're 
actually asking two questions. The first is, can we? And the 
second question is, can he? So can we grieve the Holy Spirit? Yes. Can he be grieved thereby? No. Can we do that which is grievous 
against God? Can we disrespectfully act or 
fail to give him honor and glory? Can we disobey? Can we do that 
which would grieve another in a relationship with another? 
We can do that which is grievous. But can God be grieved by our 
wickedness or our disrespect and our lack of worship and so 
on? The answer is no. God cannot be grieved. And so 
therefore, why does Paul tell us do not grieve the Holy Spirit? 
So that we do not do that which is grievous. And because God 
is a loving father who chastises his children, and when we grieve 
another person, there's a rupture of communion at times. You don't 
talk to each other, perhaps, for a time, or you have to reconcile 
after you have grieved another person. And so also when we do 
that which is grievous against the Holy Spirit, it may be that 
God chastises us by hiding his face from us or permitting us 
to undergo certain kinds of affliction and discipline, but he has not 
changed. He ordained to permit us to do 
that which is grievous, and he ordained to chastise us before 
the world began. So nothing has happened to God, 
nothing has happened in God, and yet we experience, after 
we have done that which is grievous, a different experience of our 
communion with God. So we can certainly do that which 
is grievous, but he cannot be grieved thereby. That's why I handed him the microphone. 
I think that those texts from Isaiah 63 and Ephesians 4, 30, 
that mention that, off of Sam's point, because there 
is a shared effect, that where there is grief given, there is 
a rupture of relationship, it is possible for us to rupture 
our relationship and sweet communion with God by resisting the promptings 
of His Holy Spirit. And scripture then will often 
narrate in terms of in terms of a shared effect, it will use 
the language in an accommodated way. The fancy word is anthropopathically, 
but it will ascribe human emotions like grief in the heart or grief 
to the spirit. You think of something like Genesis 
6, 6 and 7, because like one who is grieved, there is a resulting 
rupture in the relationship, and that really is the case. 
The actual emotional alteration in God is not, and you could 
go, if you want text to kind of support that, you could go 
to something like Job 35, 6 and 7, where Elihu says, If your 
sins are many, what do you do to him? If you take a literal 
read of Ephesians 4.30, the answer is you hurt him and disturb him. But I think that completely contradicts 
the plain sense of what Elihu is saying in Job 36, six and 
seven, or 35, six and seven. So you have to read, if you have 
to read the, confession sort of laterally, you also have to 
read scripture laterally, and if you have text that explicitly 
stipulate that nothing can happen to God, then text that suggests 
that he does might be susceptible of another interpretation, like 
Lancelot Andrews' interpretation. Great, thank you. Next question. How best to rephrase common things 
like when we disobey it makes God sad to children? How can 
we speak to them in a particular way or quote unquote dumb it 
down without making theological blunders at the point of the 
doctrine of God? I would say first, that's a great 
question. Whoever asked that, that's a really, really good 
question. Anyways, I'm only here to say 
things like that. These guys are answering everything. The first thing that I would 
want to say to parents or to just Christians is we should 
not fear to speak the language of scripture, to pray, to praise 
as God has revealed himself to us. The danger is not to speak 
as God has spoken of himself. The danger is to, to relegate, 
to bring God down to the level of that language. And so we do 
say, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Do not do to God that which makes 
people sad, and so on. Later on, they can understand 
more of what that really means. All they need to know for now 
is don't do grievous things. Don't do things that are not 
pleasing to God, that are not according to His will. But we 
should never hesitate to speak to God when we say, do not hide 
your face or be not angry with us, O Lord. we're using emotional 
language, but because the scriptures speak that way. And the danger 
is not in the use of that language. The danger is in thinking that 
God has somehow been contained or one-to-one expressed in that 
language that truly belongs to humans. I'll let it stand at that. That's 
what I would have said. Okay. This touches upon some 
of the content yesterday, Dr. Dulzell, that you gave us. As 
God is his perfections, or God is his attributes, are we still 
correct in stating that God is hate and God is wrath? I'm tempted to pass it off again 
because Dr. Renahan deals with this in the 
introduction to one of his books. Hate and wrath. are actually 
odd extra demonstrations of God's opposition to that which opposes 
what he loves. And I think this is very important 
that we recognize that hate is actually not something distinct 
from love that sort of sits awkwardly beside it inside of God. And 
we can use an analogy even in our own experience that Hate 
really is an expression of love, always. Now, it may be an expression 
of a bad love, but hate is always the opposition to that which 
opposes what you love. So people go to war for love. People commit murder for love. 
Now, that would be a bad love, but that hate is actually a function 
of love. So I don't think we need to be 
wound up about the idea, well, God is love. Well, then is hate 
this sort of like dark other thing that he must be? I would 
say that God is love, and then what hate is or wrath is is an 
odd extra demonstration of God opposing that which opposes his 
own loveliness and what he loves. And so in that respect I'd be 
hesitant to say God is wrath any more than I would want to 
say God is a pillar of fire. These are odd extra ways of demonstrating 
his glory and his presence in the economy of creation. Whereas 
I wouldn't hesitate to say that God is love because wrath is 
really just a manifested opposition of God toward that which opposes 
what he loves. So it is, in a certain sense, 
a kind of economic function of his own self-love. Terrific. Thank you, Dr. Dolezal. 
This question has to do with time relative to God. If there 
is no time with God, does he view the elect in a different 
way before they believe versus after? How about before, after 
Christ's death? Feels like that's coming to me, 
but. Yes and no, no, in the sense 
that there is no before and after in the how God views things. In other words, there's not a 
sequence, so to speak, of viewings in God, where there's the way 
he used to view things and the way he does now. But there is 
a sequence in the demonstration of himself toward us. And I think 
a great text on this is in Psalm 18, I think it's Psalm 18, and 
if I'm wrong, I'll just try to go from memory, but in Psalm 
18, verse 25, thereabouts, with the merciful, you show yourself 
merciful. With the blameless, you show 
yourself blameless. With the pure, you show yourself pure. 
With the devious, you show yourself shrewd. Or it could be rendered, 
with the devious, you show yourself twisted. And I do want to say 
that God really is opposed to sin. And so there is a real demonstration 
of that opposition to our sin. And in as much as we are in our 
sin and not actually yet in Christ, we are in that position underneath 
the real wrath of God. In terms of temporal perspectives. God doesn't have a temporal perspective 
on anything. He has an eternal perspective 
on time, but he doesn't have a temporal perspective on time. 
But that doesn't mean that we aren't really under his wrath 
and then aren't really under his grace. But wrath and grace 
are not states through which God transitions from a past state 
of wrath to a current state of reconciliation. But with regard 
to the showing of God, that the psalmist talks about there, there 
is a genuine, real showing of himself in which you think of 
the language of Amos 9, in which his eyes are set against you 
for evil and not good. Amos 9.4. But then the eyes that 
are set against you for evil and not good could actually become 
through the grace of Christ Jesus, his face shining upon you as 
we pray in the Levitical priestly blessing. And so that's, I think, 
again, that showing. The showings of God are not untrue 
disclosures, but nevertheless, they are temporal manifestations 
of his real opposition to sin and of his real reconciliation 
to sinners. But the before and the after lies in the order of 
the showing, not in the order of the being of the one shown. 
Yeah, thank you. To state the same things in just 
a complementary manner, the change from As James said, under God's 
wrath to now forgiven and reconciled with God is not a change in God. 
Sometimes the gospel is preached and people think of it as God 
is this raging fire and then suddenly the fire is put out 
by the blood of Jesus Christ and God has changed from being 
angry at me to now being pleased with me and reconciled with me 
and there seems to be a change in God. That's not the case, 
rather God is perfectly just And when I approach God as a 
wicked object, his justice disapproves of me and will condemn me and 
punish me, and that's his wrath. His wrath is his justice applied 
to a wicked object. I approach him as wicked, I experience 
his justice as condemnation and punishment, and we call that 
wrath because wrathful people pour out vengeance upon the object 
of their wrath. Through the blood of Christ, 
I am forgiven. I am cleansed. I am made righteous. 
And now approaching God's justice as a righteous man in Christ, 
his justice approves me. He justifies me. I am reconciled 
to him. But the same justice that anteriorly 
antecedently condemned me, that same justice now approves me 
because Jesus has changed me and I have changed. So we shouldn't 
think of propitiation as pacifying God. You have to put out the 
fire of God. Rather, you need to change relative 
to his justice. And so the before and after is 
different in us and our experience as we relate to God and experience 
different effects of his unchanging justice. Just on a contemporary 
note on that, I do think that a lot of recent evangelical and 
even reformed representations of penal substitutionary atonement, 
particularly of, give me the word, helosterion, 
propitiation, do actually suggest that God is subjectively undergoing 
an alteration due to a time-space event that took place at Calvary. 
in which the very attitude and heart of God was altered by an 
historical event. And it really does kind of enmesh 
God into a historical narrative where events in the historical 
narrative are now actually having a causal influence on him. Then 
when certain Catholics come around and they read this kind of conservative, 
modern, reformed interpretation of penal substitutionary atonement, 
that's so offensive to some of them, and I think understandably 
so, that they then make the wrong response and say, I don't believe 
in penal substitutionary atonement. But I think what offends them 
in penal substitutionary atonement is actually the lack of classical 
theism and modern presentations of that doctrine. And that maybe 
some of those Catholics, not all of them, but some of them 
are actually closer to the historic penal substitutionary atonement 
doctrine. They've just read some really theologically problematic 
presentations of it. And not comprehensively, but 
you'll get like, in a great book, like John Stott does this in 
The Cross of Christ, and it's a really good book. I like 94% 
of it, I think. But then there are these moments 
where you think this is, he clearly gives up divine impassibility 
at a couple key moments there. So, yeah. Thank you, brothers. This one connects to the time 
question. It is another time question. 
Is there time in heaven or will we experience eternity timelessly? you'll never experience anything 
timelessly in the absolute and technical sense. Time in heaven 
will no longer be sidereal time. There's no sun in that place, 
but God and the lamb are the light in that place. And whatever 
the movements are, I always tell people, in the resurrected state, 
do you ever plan once to blink your eyes? I've thought about 
this and I've decided that I think I'm going to blink my eyes just 
once. Well, if I do blink my eyes just 
once, the eyes of my body, not my soul, there are two sides 
of the beatific vision that will be taking place there. But in 
the physiological side of it, will I blink my eyes? Will I 
have hair in the resurrection, the hair I used to have? I don't 
know. But will I ever just get a little must? just once. If so, then you actually have 
movement between the before and the after and the possibility 
of quantifying that motion, in which case you would have time. 
So I'm much happier to call it the eternal state in the way 
that scripture uses the word eternity. I know we sing, you 
know, when time shall be no more, but I think what we should say 
is when sidereal time shall be no more, but then it just, I've 
tried it, it does not flow as nicely. So I still sing when 
time shall be no more, but in my head I say sidereal. star 
based time, because that seems to be in the past. And I think 
the whole way in which we experience or perceive the passage of time 
is going to be so radically altered in our glorified and immortal 
bodies and in a state that itself is not undergoing, say, the law 
of entropy, where things are breaking down and we're measuring 
the passage of time, not just by motion, but by decay, by corruption, 
by aging. There'll be no such thing as 
aging in the sense of some vitality being drained away from me. And 
so in one respect, if we can just speak comparatively, That 
kind of eternity to this kind of time and the way that I experience 
the successiveness is so radical as to make me appreciate why 
people think of that as timelessness. But in the very strict sense 
of time is the measure of movement between the before and the after, 
in that respect, the eternal state will be, in that technical 
and metaphysical sense, temporal because there'll be a successiveness. 
And also, when I sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, if that 
song has a beginning, middle, and end, There you go. One moment. Next question. Is it possible 
to arrive at the classical doctrine of God while rejecting the use 
of philosophy, metaphysics, and the light of nature in Brackett's 
natural theology? To the extent, it is possible 
actually not to have some full-blown Aristotelian Thomistic metaphysics 
with all the exact technical terms known, but I do think that 
you can't actually have the doctrine of God without having some way 
you think being is and isn't. And everybody brings, that's 
a kind of rudimentary, rustic, metaphysical commitment. Every 
single person has that. For instance, like the philosophers 
of old would say, certain of these, certain first principles 
are actually just known by common sense. That whatever is, is. You know that's right. Whatever 
is, is. Like if anyone doubts it, like 
I say, like it's, It's nap time, because whatever is, is. But 
that also means that a thing cannot be and not be at the same 
time and in the same respect. And so you can go from the law 
of being, whatever is, is, to the law of what we call contradiction 
or non-contradiction, that a thing cannot be and not be at the exact 
same time and in the exact same respect. And then other things 
like, that the whole is greater than the parts. I have found 
recently people suggesting that you somehow have to be an Aristotelian 
and you have to commit yourself to something like Aristotle's 
metaphysics in order to believe that wholes are greater than 
parts. I have not yet seen a single person though say, and here's 
an instance in which a part is equal to its own whole or greater 
than it. In other words, actually, it doesn't matter that the great 
staggerite Aristotle ever lived or said these things. His point was, you don't have 
to read me to know that holes are greater than parts. You just 
have to be basically sentient. And so I guess I want to say, 
if you omit those things, things that are just the laws of being 
that everybody sees, even in an articulate way, as first principles, 
they're the things that make conversations make sense. Without 
the law of non-contradiction, even if you can't formulate it 
in an articulated kind of textbooky way, without the law of non-contradiction, 
you cannot have an agreement or a disagreement. Because if 
I say, I am sitting, and you're like, oh, I agree. And then I 
say, I am standing, and you go, I disagree. But then we could 
only disagree if we both agreed on the law of non-contradiction. 
And so the idea of having an honest disagreement, there is 
such a thing as an honest disagreement. An honest disagreement is one 
where you both agree on basic principles of being that are 
gonna govern the entire conversation. I once had a three hour conversation 
with somebody and it came up near midnight. And then at the 
end, we were talking about God without parts. And at the end 
he just said, well what if by parts I don't mean that which 
is less than the whole upon which the whole depends." And I said, 
I said, you said after three hours, you're telling me that 
what if, what if you use the same, what if you use the word 
that everybody used in the exact same way, but that somehow you 
don't mean it that way, and that therefore you can say God's with, 
God does have parts. And I just said, forgive me, 
but you've wasted three hours of my life, and also you're being 
lazy. You have to find your own word. 
you don't just get to take words that actually have a stable constant 
meaning over millennia, and then say, I actually use those differently. 
So when I say, what color are your pants? And I say they're 
green, and you say they're hot pink, and I say you're wrong. 
But what you mean by hot pink is what I mean by green, because 
you decided that's how you're going to start referring to green 
as hot pink. I have a life to live. I just cannot do that. I guess in answer to your question, 
yes, in one respect, there has to be a certain commitment to 
metaphysical first principles. They do not necessarily have 
to be articulated in terms of college textbook style formulations 
or articulations, but everybody has a way that they think about 
being. Whatever is, is. Everybody thinks 
that. that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time in 
the same respect. They don't have to formulate it, but they 
do believe it, because that's how they have disagreements with 
people, and agreements with people. So, in a certain respect, do 
you have to sign off on a textbook Aristotelianism? No. But if Aristotle 
says something that's true, and if the implications of his metaphysics 
are necessarily true, then you don't actually have the right 
to just say, well, that's Aristotelianism, shrug your shoulders at it and 
not sort of play fair and by the rules. Because the question 
is not whether Aristotle said it. He's a pagan. The question 
is whether he was right. That's what we care about, truth. 
Augustine says, wherever the Christian may find truth, it 
is his Lord's. He says this in the context of 
waxing eloquent about how much he loves this book by Cicero, 
who he says, whose mind or pen everyone admires, though not 
his heart. That's how grown-ups think. Grown-ups 
realize that there's a difference between a bad person and a bad 
argument. Sometimes bad people make good 
arguments. And if you have an obligation 
to the truth, then you have to commit yourself to the truth 
of a good argument. And this is the test of a good argument. 
We were talking about this the other day. Clear principles, sound 
reason, true conclusions. That's my criteria for everything 
except scripture, which is the clear principle. But from there, 
that is how I measure the confession. That is how I measure Bible commentaries. 
That's how I measure philosophical arguments. Clear principles, 
sound reasons, true conclusions. And if you're going to show up 
and say, well, I disagree with your conclusions, and they're 
untrue, then you need to show me that what I thought was a 
clear principle isn't actually a clear principle, or that my 
reasoning was unsound at some point. But saying, you sound 
like Aristotle, or you sound like that friar, Thomas Aquinas, 
that's not really an argument. That really is just an ad hominem. 
And what we should actually be committed to is clear principles, 
sound reason, true conclusions. And then if we go wrong on any 
one of those things, very clearly show us where that's the case 
so we can do better. I think that's how we should go about. 
the project of classical theism. And then we can also stand to 
be corrected or finessed or improved in the way that we think and 
reason. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Next question is this. Knowing 
that God has one will, how are we to think about the covenant 
of redemption and the reformed, typically speaking, of the father 
covenanting with the son? Why is this my job? We need to be careful to formulate 
the doctrine of the covenant of redemption in a way that does 
not violate the principles that we believe with regard to classical 
theism. And some of the formulations 
have indeed done so. The concept of covenanting is 
a metaphor that God uses to describe his eternal purpose to save the 
elect through the incarnation of the son. But it's not just 
metaphor because that's actually how it plays out in time and 
space in the context of the incarnation of the son. So the eternal purpose 
of God, the singular decree, there are not decrees of God, 
but the decree of God, we can distinguish within the decree 
of God his purpose to assume our nature in order to save the 
elect. That is autemporal, it's an eternal 
decree. It is God's eternal purpose. 
So there's no deciding, there's no agreeing, there's no planning, 
even though it's called the counsel, the eternal counsel of God. That 
is human language of deliberation. What about, what if, should we, 
yes, let's, I agree, and so on. That language of deliberation 
and plan is human language that God uses to communicate to us 
his eternal purpose, his decree. No before, no after, no agreement, 
no multiple wills, and so on and so forth. But what God eternally 
planned was that the Son incarnate should fulfill a mission and 
perform a work, and that there was a reward suspended upon the 
completion of that work. And when you have a reward for 
work, then you're getting into covenant. If you do these things, 
then you will receive this reward, because work alone has no value 
unless there's some arrangement that makes it valuable for a 
reward. And because the son is given 
a mission, because the servant of the Lord must lay down his 
life and pour out his soul as an offering for sin, and having 
poured out his soul, he is therefore to be exalted and glorified, 
and given the spoils of the rich, Isaiah 53, and his people, he 
will see his offspring, He wins a glory for himself and for the 
people whom he represents. Therefore, we say this is a covenant 
of redemption, a covenant. If you perform this work, you 
will receive this reward for yourself and all those whom you 
represent. But that covenanting, that work 
for reward, that obedience, that submission, all takes place within 
the context of the son as incarnate. Whereas the covenant of redemption, 
if we think of it on the side of God's decree, covenanting 
and planning and counsel are improper notions. They are metaphorically 
predicated of God. It is his eternal purpose. It 
is his singular decree of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
All of the covenanting, working, rewards, submission, et cetera, 
takes place, Son incarnate, performing those works, receiving that subsequent 
glory, and we as co-heirs with him. So we have to make careful 
distinctions here. I don't think that push comes 
to shove to get rid of the covenant of redemption. But if it ever 
did, the covenant of redemption would have to go for the sake 
of the doctrine of God, which is more fundamental here. But 
it's not that the covenant of redemption has to go, in my opinion, 
but we need to formulate it in a more careful way that protects 
the doctrine of God and yet recognizes the manner in which the Son incarnate 
obtains our salvation and the glory that we have begun to enjoy 
and will enjoy. That's why I handed you the mic. 
I really think you're the tamest and the sanest that I've read 
on that, because I think I've read some of the other. Yeah, there are other more exotic 
interpretations, even in the history of doctrine, that I think 
do start getting a little sideways of other aspects of the confession, 
but I think, I've also read it in your book, so I knew you had 
a good answer. I will be bold enough to say that in Chapter 
7 of our Confession, I would scruple at the word agreement, 
the agreement between them both. I think it's not the best word. 
When you look at Chapter 2 and Chapter 7, you know that what 
they mean by agreement is not in violation of what they said 
in Chapter 2. And you know from their other writings, they would 
never intend to violate what they had already confessed in 
chapter two. But I think there's a safer way to express those 
things than a word such as agreement. Thank you. Next question is this. Doesn't 
the doctrine of analogy enable us to say God weeps or God is 
passionate for you is a truthful statement. Sure, yes, yes, certainly. Doesn't 
the doctrine of analogy enable us to say God weeps or God is 
passionate for you are truthful statements? Yeah. I mean, if 
we can say that God sleeps, right? I think the sons of Asaph say 
that. Why do you sleep, oh Lord? you 
know, arouse yourself, wake up. If we can talk about God's inflamed 
nostrils and we can talk about his upset tummy, bowels turned 
over within him, three times that's said in scripture. Certainly 
there's a way, certainly God himself speaks in the most physiological 
of passionate experiences to reveal his love or his opposition 
to sin. But none of those are literally 
true. And I do think that multiplying non-literally true statements 
above and beyond the explicit ones of scripture, this is, I 
think, what you have to do, and this is just part of wisdom. 
Do the people to whom you're saying this understand your statements 
as not literally true? You should ask that question 
because in my experience in the modern reformed world, that is 
not necessarily the case and it would be presumptuous to think 
that the average churchgoer, and I mean like lifelong. you 
know, baptized as an infant and been in that denomination for 
60 years, to think that they're actually hearing the language 
of Genesis 6, 6, and 7 as not literally true would be presumption 
indeed. I think most of them have been 
so bred into a kind of soft passable-ism through the commentary literature 
and through really very weak and poorly phrased theology over 
the last century, century and a half. that to add yet more 
non-literal statements about emotion to amplify the already 
non-literal statements about emotion will just simply take 
the mistake your parishioners are already making and then just 
amplify it. I think, though, to the question, 
to be technical about it, in principle, yes. But that would 
have to be done in a context in which the interpretation of 
how to handle language like that was already well taught. And 
so if I were to say something about God's left arm, which the 
Bible never speaks of, actually, I think, but speaks of his mighty 
right arm, There would have to be a sense in which I would only 
be able to say that comfortably if I was pretty sure the people 
hearing me were already agreed that God was indeed armless, 
literally speaking. Then I think if you have that 
right interpretation down, it's true, it does give you a certain 
latitude with non-literal language that can still be used for truthful 
communication, that doesn't undermine the truth of scripture or classical 
theism, and in principle, that can happen. And I know that because 
in the Bible, it does happen in many passages. Again, I think 
the question, I always use this analogy. Imagine that your congregation 
believed that all the Bible verses that were physiological either 
parts or functions in scripture were literally true. So like 
your people literally believed that God sometimes had indigestion 
or was sick to his stomach and that he rode through the heavens 
in a chariot locomotively from here to there and that he had 
white hair and that he had shins or legs. And then you came across 
a passage which spoke about God's legs or his arms or his chariot. If your people literally believe 
that God has a digestive system and rides around in the skies 
in a chariot. You have a responsibility as 
a pastor, and I would even go further and say you are derelict 
in your responsibility as a pastor if you, knowing that that's what 
they understand that language to mean, do not correct their 
error, because they have effectively read the Bible in a literal way 
and reduced God to one of the gods of the nations at best. 
A literal read of the Bible can actually be a false theology. 
Why do you sleep, O Lord? But then if you say God literally 
sleeps, what do you do with the passage that says the Holy One 
of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps? end up with a hopelessly 
confused congregation. And as a pastor, it's your job 
to make sure that doesn't happen. So if you could take it from, 
if you could forget the physiological bodily aspects of which scripture 
speaks tributes to God in countless places and change it just slightly 
to God's having an emotional experience of the world where 
the world causally affects God's mood. Let's pretend that's how 
it is. I don't even have to pretend 
on that one. That is where most of our modern congregations are. 
That is where most of our modern reform literature is actually. 
I mean, well, you edited a book to help us not be there, Confessing 
the Impassible God. But I noticed that in that book, 
you're interacting with a lot of contemporary Calvinistic and 
reform literature that actually is reinforcing the literal interpretation 
of God as a passionate being who's having an experience of 
the world altering his moods inside of himself. And so I think 
at this point, this is just a sliding scale. What's the difference 
between those two? One has to do with the non-literalness 
of physiology, the other one has to do with the non-literalness 
of passions. That would be my only caution, my answer in short, 
in principle. In principle, yes, that's possible. 
In practice, know the times and know your people. Just know whether 
that's actually a good move to make. And maybe you mentioned 
confessing the impassable God. I know Dr. Renahan, Pastor Butler, 
in that book, you treated the hypostatic union as it connects 
to this reality, because some people will use the logic, well, 
Jesus wept, Jesus is God, therefore God must literally and properly 
weep. And so maybe just with regards 
to the hypostatic union and the two natures of Christ, how we 
should properly handle questions like that in that light. Go ahead. Sam doesn't know. Yeah, I think this is also, this 
maybe goes to the point that we also, while we need a good 
sort of Nicene Trinitarianism, which our confession does have, 
we equally need a good Chalcedonian Christology, which our confession 
also has, which is to say that the person of the sun subsists 
in two natures, and while those two natures are inseparable, 
they are also unmixed. And so his divinity doesn't divinize 
his humanity. His humanity doesn't humanize 
his divinity. The two do not actually mix or 
blend together or modify each other. And in so much as he really 
is true man, having taken that reasonable soul and body to himself 
in the incarnation, we can say of the son that he undergoes 
passions, that he is temporal, that he's multi-parted, that 
he grows in knowledge even. And so there are all sorts of 
things that I say about him as God that I don't say about him 
as man and vice versa. And I think that that gives us 
a place to coherently locate descriptions of the son's finitude 
and passion. And we can actually read those 
things literally. So when Jesus weeps, he literally does weep 
and he literally does have human emotions or passions in his soul 
as he looks at Israel rejecting their own Messiah and the very 
promises that they had hoped in and rejecting that hope when 
it actually appeared among them in the flesh. And when he's moved 
in his human soul to grief, like Paul is in Romans nine, to grief 
over Israel's hardness, That is a real, literal human emotion 
that is taking place, yes, in the person of the son, but through 
the human nature, and so there is a very good place to locate 
that that does not in any way infringe upon his impassibility. 
As God, he doesn't literally weep. As man, he does. As God, 
he doesn't digest food or have indigestion. As man, why not? As God, he doesn't sleep. As 
man, he takes a nap in the back of a boat. I mean, you could 
just do this all day long and say, but both of these things 
are true of the same person in as much as he is subsistent to 
really distinct natures at once. Yeah. This next question has to do 
with Calvin's view of aseity. Is Calvin's view of the aseity 
of the sun compatible with what was taught at this conference? You know, I literally started 
reading that book on Monday, and I only got a few pages in 
to Richard Muller's Understanding the Divine. I don't remember 
the title. A recently published book on Calvin's view. I would 
read Muller. I haven't read him yet, so I'm 
not familiar with Calvin's view enough to really answer. Perhaps 
Dr. Dolezal knows, but Dr. Richard Muller has just published 
a new work on this very issue. Maybe you know. Well, I endorsed 
the book, and I did actually read it. But that doesn't mean, 
and I liked it, obviously, but that doesn't mean that I can 
fully reproduce a fairly technical argument. I just remember sitting 
in my easy chair finding it persuasive. That's all I can say for that. 
I haven't read Ellis's book. You found it persuasive? Persuasive, 
yeah. Ellis is the other view, Oxford University Press, maybe 
one of your, he's a Westminster, California guy, way back, who 
writes on the aseity of the sun. And you're gonna get to, Mueller 
does take issue with some of Ellis' interpretation on that 
question, and he also takes issue with whether, how comprehensively 
Calvin's view passed into the mainstream of the reform tradition 
because it seems like it's a minority view, it seems, in the history 
of the reform tradition, though it's gotten a sort of second 
wind of late. I suspect... Not in terms of 
Ellis' scholarship, but I suspect part of the reason that Calvin's 
view has been somewhat revived is because it does stand in stark 
contrast to Thomas Aquinas' view. And there is a kind of anti-tomism 
out there that's real. And so if we can revive something 
from Calvin that seems to overturn a fundamental commitment of Aquinas, 
it's almost too appealing to pass up. I just think, though, 
at the same time, then you have to account for why did most of 
the reform tradition seem to side with Aquinas on that and 
not Calvin? These are just things to wrestle 
through, but in terms of the technicalities. Maybe you could 
just give a quick breakdown as to where Calvin disagreed or 
there was a difference between Calvin and Aquinas. What's the 
issue? The issue is whether the son is God of himself or whether 
he receives the divine nature via communication from the father. Calvin's view is that he receives 
only his personhood from the father. Aquinas' view is that 
he receives all that he has from the father. The argument for 
Aquinas' view would go to something like John 5, 26, thereabouts. that all that the father has, 
or all the son has, he has from the father. The historical interpretation 
of that is that that's an intra-Trinitarian receiving or communication. And 
that, I think, would favor the Aquinas view, but that also favors 
the majority reform view. It doesn't so much favor the 
Calvin view. Calvin's concern, though, is 
wouldn't a communicated or received deity be exactly not aseity? and that's really his concern. As best I can reconstruct it, 
but you're right, the new book by Muller really gets into, it's 
probably the latest technical treatment of that question. Thank 
you. We distinguish between good and 
bad, suffering, having illness versus having a great job, but 
is there truly such a thing as bad suffering in God's economy? Would you repeat the question? 
I will. We distinguish between good and bad. Excuse me. My cadence in reading the question 
was bad. Sorry you had to suffer through 
it. We distinguish between good and bad suffering. having illnesses 
versus having a great job, but is there truly such a thing as 
quote-unquote bad suffering in God's economy? God, you know, 
has predestinated all things, he has foreordained all things 
that come to pass, and sovereignly and providentially governs them, 
so is there bad suffering? The good end of God's decree 
does not negate the reality of evil and suffering in the world. 
So even if God works all things together for good, the all things, 
many of them are bad in themselves. So we must be careful not to 
deny the reality of suffering and affliction as things that 
are bad in themselves that we suffer. Either God permits them 
or he sends them, things that happen to us or things that other 
people do to us. are truly evil and painful and 
bad, and God permits them. So yes, in themselves they are 
bad, but as we say, God can build a complex good out of simple 
evils. He can take things that in themselves 
are evil and use them, work them together with other things to 
make something that is good. So Was it wrong to murder Jesus? Was it wrong to falsely accuse 
Jesus? Did Jesus suffer bad things? 
Yes, it was unjust for him to be accused, to be punched, to 
have his beard pulled, to have, everything that Jesus suffered 
was evil and wrong, and they should not have done those things. 
He should not have been nailed to the cross. They should not 
have done those things. And yet God worked it all together 
for the greatest good, our salvation and ultimately his glory. So 
if I understood the question correctly, then the good end 
of God's decree does not negate the evil of this world and the 
suffering of this life. Yep, excellent. I would say, 
I like Thomas Watson's little treatise on Romans 8, 28. A Divine 
Cordial or All Things for Good, where he really explores the 
question of how can things not good be for good? It's really, 
really worthy if you've not read that book. Yeah, excellent. Are there any accessible books 
on the Trinity that you might recommend And if a poor guy like 
me only has James White's book, why shouldn't it be that one? 
Let's not do that. It is 1230. I do want to recommend 
one. I'll leave James White well enough 
alone. Scott Swain's little book called The Trinity, Subtitle 
and Introduction. It has this kind of like nice 
lime green cover and it's fairly inexpensive. And I don't know 
that I've seen a book that short, that precise and readable at 
once. And so I couldn't say more than 
that. I think it is really, it is the on-ramp. If you want to 
like get up to highway speed, maybe Gilles Emery, The Trinity. 
an introduction or something like that. But if you really 
want to get onto, if you really need to get from like the side 
of the road on the on-ramp, Scott Swain. Yeah, I agree 100%. Yeah, 
excellent. Thank you. Well, it is 12.30, 
as Pastor Butler said. Thank you, men, for the questions, 
for fielding these, for answering them very well. I hope everybody 
enjoyed the conference and this Q&A period. We're going to close 
the day with the singing of a hymn. We have the Gloria Patry, so 
if we could all stand together. Before we sing that, there is 
a feedback survey in your booklet. So please scan the QR code, provide 
some feedback, anything that you thought, think could be improved 
in the future for these conferences, please use that and please provide 
some valuable feedback. And real quick, Association Pastors, 
our church building, to sign the document before the roundtable 
thing. So that should be your next stop. Glory be to the Father, and to 
the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is 
now, and ever shall be. Remember, if you're able to, 
clean your areas and then if you'd like to discuss one with 
another and with the speakers, it would be good for us to move 
outside as soon as we can. Thank you.