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CTF 2025 - What Are the Modern Day Issues With the Trinity?

Jim Butler · 2024-12-20 · 722 words · 6 min

CTF 2025 - Preview

I think we're good with that. 
In terms of the positive that we're teaching about classical 
theism, great as per confession. What are a couple sort of modern 
issues that we will see come up contrasting Chapter 2, where 
current guys have gone away from the orthodox understanding? Well, 
I think one of the big ones is going to be the equality of the 
Son with the Father. You know, going back to 2016 
when there seemed to be a little bit of an explosion with regards 
to the eternal subordination of the Son or the eternal functional 
subordination of the Son or eternal relationships of authority and 
submission. I think that will be one of the 
modern departures from historic truth that will be treated. Simply, and we sing it in the 
hymn, laud and honor to the Father, laud and honor to the Son, laud 
and honor to the Spirit, ever three and ever one. And the old 
hymn used to have the lyrics, consubstantial, co-eternal, while 
unending ages run. The simple truth and the glorious 
truth is that the eternal Son, the eternally begotten Son of 
the Father, is equal with the Father, that there is no degradation 
in the Trinity, there is no hierarchy in the Trinity. And so that will 
certainly come up because that error has always been with us, 
and it seems that it will continue to be with us until Christ comes 
again, and so it's important that we educate our people in 
the churches. And these conferences, again, 
these conferences don't replace church, but they're a good avenue 
to bring up the truths of the Bible and to target and inoculate 
ourselves against these modern errors and arm us with the blessed 
truth against such departures from it. Yeah, and I would say 
that historically, I mean, there's a lot of errors and a lot of 
heresies involved in the Trinity and in Christology. I would say 
two of the primary ones, or the overarching ones, would be Arianism, 
which has a problem with the unity of the divine essence, 
and then Sabellianism, which has a problem with the triunity 
of persons. So, those always raise their 
heads in every generation it seems. And again, you could fill, 
you know, a book with the various departures, but those seem to 
be kind of, you know, recurring challenges to the doctrine of 
the Trinity as espoused in Scripture and formulated in the creeds 
and confessions. Yeah, and I think when paragraph 
3 of chapter 2 is treated as well, there will probably be 
something of a discussion on social Trinitarianism, which 
seems to be closer to tritheism than actual biblical Trinitarianism, 
because it does separate the persons in a particular sense, 
you know, saying that the Trinity is more of a community than it 
is the one God who eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit. The connected error to that is 
the The assertion that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 
have separate wills and separate operations. And our confession, 
very carefully, and actually our Second London Baptist Confession, 
the paragraph three is much more robust. then we have the advantage 
of time, mind you, because we came after the Congregationalists 
and before them, the Presbyterians. But it's a very robust chapter 
that articulates, in fact, in a very Trinitarian way, the oneness 
of God, the threeness of persons, the oneness of God, the threeness, 
the oneness and the threeness. It reiterates it and it establishes 
against such modern errors like social Trinitarianism or Tritheism, 
which we probably don't see as much as the Arianism and the 
Sabellianism that Jim talked about. but certainly the upholding 
of the one will and the one operation of God. That the persons aren't 
acting in such a manner where the Father does 33 and a third 
percent, the Son the same, the Spirit the same, but much rather 
that all the outward acts of God are the acts of the one and 
only living and true God who eternally exists as Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit. And as we've seen in our Saturday 
morning studies, I think it was Barrett's book, Simply Trinity, 
all the social Trinitarian models produce leftism and communism. So practically it's a bad way 
to go. Yeah, very good.