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Theological term

Social Trinitarianism

6 sermons · All terms

Jan 9, 2025

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

Unknown

Two ministers survey the modern doctrinal errors threatening a right understanding of the Trinity, contrasting them with the robust trinitarianism of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689 LBCF) Chapter 2. The discussion identifies the eternal subordination of the Son controversy, Arianism, Sabellianism, and social trinitarianism as recurring and contemporary departures from orthodox Trinitarian confession. Particular attention is given to the Confession's insistence on the one will and one operation of God, against models that fracture the divine unity by assigning separate wills or discrete percentages of action to each person.

Dec 20, 2024

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

Jim Butler

This preview conversation addresses two recurring categories of Trinitarian error — subordinationism and social Trinitarianism — that the Classical Theism and the Faith 2025 conference will treat. The speakers ground their discussion in 1689 LBCF Chapter 2, particularly paragraph 3, arguing that the eternal Son is fully equal with the Father (contra eternal subordination of the Son), and that the divine persons share one will and one operation (contra social Trinitarianism and tritheism). The practical stakes are high: errors in Trinitarian theology distort both worship and social ethics, and confessional churches must arm their people with the historic biblical formulation.

Dec 10, 2023

2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2

Cameron PorterJohn 20:28

The deity of Jesus Christ is not a late ecclesiastical imposition but the irreducible confession of Scripture, the early church, and the Reformed confessional tradition. This lesson, the second in a series through 2LCF Chapter 8, opens by reading paragraphs 1–2 of the confession before working through both what the orthodox doctrine of Christ's deity does NOT mean — rejecting polytheism, social trinitarianism, homoiousian subordinationism, modalism, and kenoticism — and what it positively asserts: that Christ is very and eternal God, of one substance with Father and Spirit, equal to the Father, personally distinct within the Godhead, and unchanging in deity through the incarnation. The biblical witness is then marshalled under five categories — explicit statements, Christ's self-witness, NT application of OT divine texts, divine perfections predicated of Christ, and divine works ascribed to Him — to demonstrate that the deity of Christ is axiomatic rather than argued in Scripture itself.

Jul 30, 2023

2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity

Cameron Porter

The doctrine of the Trinity is the capstone of the confession's treatment of God, asserting that the one divine and infinite being eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — three subsistences of one substance, power, and eternity, each possessing the whole divine essence undivided. This session works through six confessional affirmations: that Trinitarian monotheism excludes tritheism; that confessing one God in three persons is no contradiction; that the persons do not collectively comprise God in fractional parts; that the persons are distinguished solely by their eternal relations of origin; that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are fully co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial; and that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a cold academic exercise but the very foundation of all communion with God and comfortable dependence on Him.

Feb 20, 2023

Livestream - The Basis for Love and Unity

Jim Butler

Ephesians 4:4–6 presents seven 'ones' — one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father — as the objective, Spirit-wrought basis for the love and unity to which Paul exhorts believers in verses 1–3. The sermon argues that these seven unities are not aspirational ideals but present realities constituted by the Holy Spirit in the production of the church, and that believers are therefore called to steward, not generate, the unity already given. The practical weight falls on bearing with one another in love, contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, and recognising that the Triune God — not social trinitarianism — is the foundation of all communion and the basis for genuine ecumenism among confessional Christians.

Audio
Nov 6, 2016

2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity

Cameron Porter

The doctrine of God and the Holy Trinity, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 2, is approached here through three progressive affirmations drawn from Scripture and the Reformed confessional tradition: God is, God is one, and God is one in three persons. The incomprehensibility of God frames the entire study — not that He cannot be known, but that He cannot be exhaustively comprehended by any creaturely mind. Moving from general revelation through the law of nature to the biblical witness of monotheism and finally to the Trinitarian distinctions of unbegottenness, eternal generation, and eternal procession, the sermon demonstrates that the doctrine of the Trinity is not speculative theology but the very foundation of all communion with God and comfortable dependence upon Him.