Theological term
Subsistences
2 sermons · All terms
The Central Confession of Israel's Faith
The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 — 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one' — is examined as the central confession of Old Covenant Israel's faith, carrying both theological and polemical force for a people about to enter a land saturated with polytheism and syncretism. The sermon traces the purpose of God's commandments (obedience secured tenure in the land), the theological content of the Shema (divine unity of singularity and simplicity, and its compatibility with Trinitarian confession), and the fitting response of wholehearted love toward the one living and true God. The application presses New Covenant believers to the same totality of devotion — presenting themselves as living sacrifices — grounded in the redemption God has accomplished in Christ, the true Israel who kept the covenant His people perpetually broke.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity
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.