Theological term
Subordinationism
6 sermons · All terms
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 3
The sinlessness of Christ, the efficient and instrumental causes of the incarnation, and the hypostatic union are examined through a clause-by-clause exposition of 2LCF Chapter 8, paragraph 2, with supporting analysis of paragraphs 3 and 7. The confession's language — 'yet without sin,' 'conceived by the Holy Spirit,' 'of the seed of Abraham and David,' 'without conversion, composition, or confusion' — is unpacked against the background of patristic Christology, Chalcedonian definition, and Reformed theological precision. The ministry of the Holy Spirit throughout the entire mediatorial life of Christ is recovered as an often-neglected dimension of Christology. Incarnational and interpretive rules drawn from paragraph 7 equip hearers to handle Scripture passages that appear to diminish Christ's deity, by distinguishing what is predicated of a nature from what is predicated of the one person according to a nature.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity, Part 3
The Holy Spirit as the third subsistence of the one divine essence is the subject of this study in Chapter 2, Paragraph 3 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. The session traces the Spirit's presence and deity through both Testaments, works through the meaning of eternal procession from the Father and the Son (the filioque), and engages the historical debates at the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Toledo that shaped confessional Trinitarian language. The practical conclusion drawn from the Confession is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not abstract speculation but the foundation of all communion with God and the believer's comfortable dependence upon Him.
The First Commandment
The First Commandment — 'You shall have no other gods before me' (Deuteronomy 5:7) — demands both the rejection of every rival and the cultivation of genuine knowledge of the true and living God. The sermon works through the specific sins condemned by the commandment (atheism, polytheism, syncretism, idolatry, sorcery, heresy, and creature-worship), grounding each in Old and New Testament texts, before turning to the positive obligations the commandment requires: knowing God as Trinity, knowing His divine perfections, and knowing His external works in creation, providence, and redemption. The commandment functions pedagogically to expose humanity's chronic unfaithfulness and drive sinners to repentance, and normatively to call the redeemed to a rigorous, lifelong growth in the knowledge of who Yahweh is.
The Great Commission
Christ's Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20 provides the church with her complete marching orders: go, make disciples, baptize those disciples, and teach them to observe all that Christ commanded. The authority behind the commission belongs to the risen and exalted Christ, who possesses all authority in heaven and earth; the assurance sustaining it is His promise of perpetual presence to the end of the age. The sermon treats the specific focus of the commission in sequence, defending believers' baptism by immersion as the pattern demanded by the text and the order it establishes — make disciples first, then baptize — against both baptismal regeneration and paedobaptism. The Trinitarian formula of baptism occasions an extended treatment of theology proper, including divine simplicity, impassibility, and the unity of essence in three persons, with warnings against tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism.
The Great Commission, Part 3
Matthew 28:19 commands that disciples be baptized into the singular name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — a text that stands as one of Scripture's clearest witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity. This sermon works through the baptismal formula to establish what the one name and three persons require the Christian to confess: one divine essence, three distinct subsistences, free from the errors of tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism. The active obedience of Christ is exposited as the ground of the righteousness imputed to sinners in justification, showing that the gospel itself is inseparable from a right doctrine of God. The congregation is urged to study the confession's chapters on theology proper and Christology, and to hold the doctrine of the Trinity as a white-knuckle conviction worth dying for.
Of God and the Holy Trinity (2LCF 2.3)
What does it mean to confess that God is one being subsisting in three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? This study of 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith chapter 2, paragraph 3 works through the classical Trinitarian formulation upheld by the particular Baptists, tracing its foundations in Scripture, its continuity with the ecumenical creeds, and the Baptist Confession's terminological improvement of 'subsistences' over 'persons.' The exposition addresses the unity and equality of the three subsistences, the personal distinctions expressed by eternal generation and procession, and the practical necessity of robust Trinitarian confession in an age of continuing anti-Trinitarian error.