The Most Important Creed in History

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Host

   Thank you all for taking this opportunity to sit and be peppered a little bit more. So, as we get ready — just to start with what classical text has helped you understand and love Nicene Trinitarianism, and why. I'm going to start with Gavin here, if that's okay.

2. 00:30

   Gavin Ortlund

   I'm going to mention Anselm's Proslogion — you knew I was going to talk about Anselm. The title doesn't sound very appetizing, maybe, but it's a short book, fairly easy to read, written in about the eleventh century. A lot of times for the Trinity we go to the church Fathers, where there's polemical theology and it's being contested, which is really helpful. But I also find it helpful to approach the Trinity from a different angle. Anselm is thinking about the Trinity in relation to human happiness, and specifically in relation to the beatific vision, which means the soul's sight of God. I find that such a helpful angle of entry, so I'd encourage everyone to consider reading that book.

3. 00:59

   Gavin Ortlund

   I think what Matthew was just saying — that the Trinity is to be worshiped and adored, not merely understood — Anselm is a great entry point into that.

4. 01:17

   Host

   Amen. Dr. DeYoung, would you mind speaking to that briefly?

5. 01:34

   Kevin DeYoung

   When I did this video earlier this morning, and now hearing the question again, I realize I didn't really answer the question that was given to me, which was for a specific text on Trinitarian theology. In my breakout session I talked about Cyril of Alexandria's book on the two natures, against Nestorius, which is great. But the book I want to mention here — which does believe in the Trinity, but is not explicitly about the Trinity — is Gregory the Great's Book of Pastoral Rule. There are so many great books on pastoral ministry and pastoral theology, and certainly this is one that has stood the test of time. Gregory was a pope, and I don't agree with everything he says in all of his theology, of course, but you can get it in the Popular Patristics Series. It's not long — you could read it. I assign it often in my pastoral ministry class.

6. 02:31

   Kevin DeYoung

   Two things are really noteworthy about this book. First — probably the most famous part of the book is the second half, where he talks about preaching. It's good to remember that the importance of preaching was not just a Reformation idea; almost anyone who was someone we're still reading and talking about today believed in and was an example of preaching and teaching. He goes through thirty-six pairs of different kinds of people the preacher must be mindful of as he's preaching — just thirty-six pairs. It's very proto-Puritan: men and women, young and old, rich and poor — you get that. But then there's very fine nuance: those who are prone to rashness, those prone to timidity, those inclined not to care what other people think, those inclined to care too much about what other people think. It's full of wisdom, and it's very readable to go through those different pairs and think about how you preach — and understand this: here's a mistake a lot of pastors make. We preach to people like they're all like us — like they all resonate with the same things, all have the same needs, all will respond to the same kind of encouragement. As if everyone in the congregation just needs the pastor to give them a big bear hug and say, 'I just love you so much.' Or, others need the coach who grabs you and says, 'Go out and give me a hundred push-ups,' and you're like, 'Yes, I want to do that.' Well, people don't all respond to that.

7. 4:06

   Kevin DeYoung

   The other thing woven throughout the text is this call for the pastor to live both a contemplative life and an active life. It's a little hard for us to understand because we're not drawn to monasticism per se. But when you think about it, many people are drawn to a life like Calvin's — he wanted a life of quiet solitude, to read his books and to write. God may give that to a few people; or you may train for a marathon, or discipline your body through some physical exercise. Well, they were drawn to this life of contemplation and study, and one of the things Gregory would say was: if God has given you these gifts, he's given them to you to serve others with them. Gregory himself wanted that quiet, contemplative life more than anything, and so did many others throughout history. But Gregory is saying, God gave you those gifts for other people. Yes, to lead the contemplative life of study, reflection, meditation, reading, writing, and doctrinal rumination is what a pastor ought to be doing — but he's also called to be in all of the messiness of discipling people's lives and running complex organizations, because Gregory was basically running the broken shards of the Roman Empire, all that was left of it. So it's a great call to pastoral ministry and to the things that matter.

8. 05:41

   Host

   Amen. Thank you so much for that. Dr. Sanders — you have spoken similarly about an influence on you that was trying to balance that contemplative and public ministry life. Would you mind speaking to that aspect, on a classical text that's influenced your life that's tangential to that?

9. 06:01

   Fred Sanders

   I would recommend Augustine's On the Trinity. That's pretty simple, right? It's a large book — a little bit difficult. You could just read the first third and you'd get most of the benefit. He really engages Scripture, raises all the right questions, and works through the history of interpretation down to his own time. He's just so good at running it through the Nicene grid. He thinks, we've reached a moment of clarity here, theologically and confessionally, with the Nicene Creed — and he does a wonderful, clear job talking through it.

10. 06:42

    Host

    Thank you so much for that. I'm going to come down to Dr. Reeves at the end here for this next one. As an Anglican, you have a rich heritage — the Nicene Creed is an essential component of the Book of Common Prayer, especially in preparation for Communion. Why did Cranmer insert the Creed into the Prayer Book like that?

11. 07:03

    Michael Reeves

    I think if you'd asked Cranmer that question, he would have been utterly baffled — he would think, why would I not put the Nicene Creed into our liturgy? Because he, along with the other Reformers, believed they were not innovators, but renovators. You see this very clearly when Calvin writes a letter to Cardinal Sadoleto defending the Reformation, and says, our agreement with the ancient church is far greater than yours. Cranmer isn't making a clever political point by inserting the Nicene Creed to feign some catholicity, some unity with the early church — this is his most basic assumption. He's seeing that, rather than the Roman Catholic Church being the one in faithful continuity with the early church, the Roman Catholic Church has actually deviated from the faithfulness of the early church, and it's the evangelicals — the Reformers — who are in continuity.

12. 08:20

    Michael Reeves

    This is something critical for us to hold today, because so many Christians feel a fear of engaging with the early church — they think, isn't that kind of Roman Catholic territory, before the Reformation? They're not quite my guys. I love going through the doctrine of justification in the early church Fathers with my students, just to show them: when Cyril, when Athanasius are talking about their understanding of salvation, this is in absolute continuity with what the Reformers are talking about.

13. 09:07

    Michael Reeves

    We tend to split church history and say that in the early church there's all this conversation about the doctrine of God and Christology, and no real concern for justification or soteriology. But actually, you read these theologians and they're seeing that what you make of Christ, what you make of God, will entirely shape what kind of salvation is going to be produced. The Reformers saw that. Right at the beginning of the Reformation, Luther said that the Trinity is the highest article on which all others hang — he's seeing that faithfulness to Nicene doctrine is what's actually enabling him to have the soteriology he's promoting. So Cranmer wanted to put that in there, not to make a point, but because of a deep belief: we are the ones who are being Catholic, who are loyal to the apostolic gospel.

14. 10:10

    Host

    I love that — like you said, it would be such a foreign idea to even think about why you wouldn't do that. I think this is a good follow-up to ask Dr. DeYoung, as a pastor: why should pastors here seriously consider incorporating the Nicene Creed into their liturgies?

15. 10:33

    Kevin DeYoung

    The whole conference has wonderfully been answering that question, and Matthew did a great job. First, it connects us with history. There was a reference earlier to a phenomenon — I don't know if it's grassroots or more of an elite phenomenon — of some folks drawn to Roman Catholicism, drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy, drawn to the beards, drawn to the history. We have this opportunity, especially in this seventeen-hundredth anniversary of the council, to say exactly what Mike said: this is our history, these are our guys, this is our story.

16. 11:20

    Kevin DeYoung

    I heard one church historian put it to me rather cheekily — and I know our Roman Catholic friends wouldn't agree with this — but he said, I think you could argue that the Roman Catholic Church as we know it today did not exist until the Reformation either, meaning there was a church in need of reformation. Any honest historian agrees it was desperately in need of reformation, and there was a Catholic Counter-Reformation — they sought to reform it in two very different ways. So we're not just sneaking into the Catholic Church to plunder the Egyptians and grab some stuff while no one's looking. No — Nicaea, as much as anything, is not only expressing orthodoxy, it is orthodoxy, and it's for our churches too.

17. 12:18

    Kevin DeYoung

    I know for some it may be a stretch — you have to teach some people, give them some of the language. You don't just drop it on the first Sunday. A great way — I hope you don't wait till Christmas, but if you get to Christmas, do it the Sunday you sing 'O Come, All Ye Faithful,' and you have the line 'begotten, not created.' If you connect that with people — because everyone in your church knows that hymn — some of them will say, 'I want to know why I'm saying those words, why that hymn is so important.' And you tell them, and you help them see past all the objections. This thing called the church — our churches too, we're part of this small-c catholic church. It has been around for two thousand years. We're going to celebrate the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of America next year — two hundred fifty years; two thousand years. People on every continent, of every education level and economic stratum, have been saying these things, believing these things. That's amazing.

18. 13:24

    Gavin Ortlund

    Can I add one sentence to that? I disagree with Kevin here, having done this — my church in Ojai is very low-church, but we recite the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed, and people love it. My own lesson learned is that we often underestimate what the sheep want. Theologically we think, 'Oh, they're not interested in this,' and we can do it badly — but if we do it well, people are panting for deep theology.

19. 13:50

    Host

    Amen — that's a good follow-up. Dr. Horton, I'd love to come down to you really quick. As a Reformed theologian, why is Nicene Trinitarianism a key ingredient of the Reformed confessions?

20. 14:39

    Michael Horton

    Really, our confessions and catechisms are briefs on the Nicene Creed. They follow the order of the Creed — they're really just extrapolations from our Reformation traditions; we see our confessions and catechisms as expansions on the Nicene Creed. And by the way, the Nicene Creed is more important than the Apostles' Creed, because the Apostles' Creed came along in the seventh century — it's rooted in the Old Roman Symbol and other early materials — but the Nicene Creed realized there had to be important qualifications. Language had to be used to protect the articles we confess in the Apostles' Creed, so it's just a bit more rigorous.

21. 15:21

    Michael Horton

    I'd add too — this is an emphasis especially of the Cappadocian Fathers that the Reformed tradition really emphasizes: everything comes from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. That has to be in the liturgy throughout, not just in the formula of the Trinity. As St. Basil said, we have to inculcate the Trinity not just in the Creed but in the doxology — building on the point Matthew just made, terrifically. I hear lots of prayers, for example, where well-meaning brothers and sisters will pray, 'In your name, Amen.' If a student of mine says that, I'll interrupt their prayer and ask — not quite like this, but essentially — who are you talking to? 'I'm talking to God.' Well, you can't come to him directly — you're talking to the Father, and you can't go to him immediately; you have to go to him through the mediation of his Son. So, 'in Christ's name, Amen.' And then you also hear prayers thanking the Holy Spirit for dying on the cross — and, who are you talking to?

22. 17:15

    Michael Horton

    I love that this has been so emphasized here. It has to be woven into the liturgy, because if it's not — especially for young people — you come to Trinity Sunday or Pentecost Sunday, you do your homily on the Trinity once a year, and the kids' eyes glaze over, and so do their parents' — 'Great, is there coffee?' It doesn't resonate because you haven't been living it, singing it, praying it beforehand.

23. 180:01

    Michael Horton

    I'd commend John Owen's book on communion with the persons of the Trinity, which Kelly Kapic has a short, updated version of — it's terrific. You can really pray to each person, develop a personal relationship with each person of the Godhead. Have you ever thought about how wonderful that is — that I can develop a personal relationship with each person of the Godhead, without sundering their unity? That's something we should do in worship.

24. 18:38

    Host

    Amen. Gavin, you kind of spoke to this, but having written 'What It Means to Be Protestant' — why is fidelity to the creeds of Christ not contrary to the true spirit of Protestantism?

25. 18:51

    Gavin Ortlund

    Maybe the shortest way to say this is that the Reformation was not a rejection of what had come prior — so much so that part of the whole appeal was to draw from catholicity. I want to be careful here, because history is very messy. Nonetheless, if you listen to how the Reformers and early Protestant theologians argued, they weren't just arguing from Scripture — they were arguing from patristic catholicity: patristic meaning church Fathers, catholicity meaning the wholeness of the church. I think it's good to keep hammering away at this, because I do think many of our churches today have fallen away from this original vision. We need to go back to the Reformers and listen carefully to what their aims were.

26. 19:47

    Gavin Ortlund

    They were not trying to resurrect a dead church — they were trying to reform a church. Yes, there are errors, there are serious errors, but the effort was not a rejection of everything; it was a removal of the errors, a reforming of practices. And in that effort, Scripture was not the only anchor appealed to — there was also this appeal to the Fathers. If you want a good book on this, John Jewel's Apology of the Church of England would be a good one — he's constantly making this appeal.

27. 20:19

    Gavin Ortlund

    I'll give a quick example: the sacraments — take the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper. Today, people often think Protestants have a lower view and non-Protestant traditions have a higher view. But in that context, the effort was to oppose infrequent participation — once a year for many lay Christians, in one kind only, only the bread, not the wine — superstitious practices, like, 'If I get some of the bread and bury it in my garden, I'll get better crops.' This kind of thing, on-the-ground realities, and transubstantiation, which is one particular understanding of how we feast on Christ — those were the kinds of things they were arguing against, and to do so, they appealed to the church Fathers over and over again, saying that the practice which had accrued slowly over time — the practice we're opposing, calling for reform against — is a medieval innovation.

28. 21:26

    Gavin Ortlund

    Now, the argumentation didn't happen that way on every single point, but I'd say on most of them. It's so instructive for us to go back to that mindset and think, where have we maybe fallen away from that? Again, I don't want to be simplistic — church history is very complicated. Nonetheless, if you read Luther and Calvin and the others, they appeal to the church Fathers constantly, and they explicitly affirm the Nicene Creed. So — that's enough for now.

29. 21:59

    Host

    Absolutely. I feel like now I can't hold off any longer — Dr. Barrett, as the author of 'The Reformation as Renewal': the hints we've been getting — were they trying to reform the doctrine of God, or not?

30. 22:17

    Matthew Barrett

    I think the question would have been bizarre to them too, because, as you're saying, context really matters. In the sixteenth century, so many of the innovations, the errors they were up against, have to do with soteriology and ecclesiology — and we could elaborate on the authority of Scripture in relation to ecclesiology, but I'll just put it under those two categories for now. We have to be careful, though, because there was another group in the sixteenth century we call the radicals, and they actually were the ones taking a genuinely radical view of history. Some of the most aggressive interpreters of history would go so far as to say that since the apostles, the church has been in the Dark Ages — but 'we're here now, so don't worry.' That's a reading of history the Reformers did not share and did not appreciate, because at the same time they were answering objections from Rome, where Rome was saying to the Reformers, you're innovators, this is novel.

31. 23:45

    Matthew Barrett

    You have to remember, in the sixteenth century, the word 'innovation' or 'novelty' was practically synonymous with 'heretical.' So the Reformers are fighting for their lives at this point — whether it's John Jewel, whether it's Calvin having to write an apologetic response to Sadoleto's letter urging Geneva to come back home, or Luther. At the end of Luther's life, he had high hopes for the Reformation; he's a little discouraged it didn't go exactly how he'd hoped — not all the fruit is what he thought it would be — and he's looking at individual churches with some discouragement, having to write to them and say, don't go the radical direction, as if we need to reinvent the wheel, as if no one has appeared in history before us. We do have a history.

32. 24:41

    Matthew Barrett

    And he's writing to them saying, why are you not saying the creeds? Where's the Athanasian Creed? Where's the Nicene Creed? Where's the Apostles' Creed? It's a bit of a rebuke — quite practical, based on what he'd seen on a Sunday morning in a number of their churches. So, all that to say: it really is not a reformation of the doctrine of God. On that point, they would have been aghast, because they would have said, well, if we're trying to change the doctrine of God, then Rome is right — we are innovators. I think the Reformers would have been shocked by what came next, with the rise of the Socinians, and it fell on the shoulders of many Protestant scholastics to go back to the doctrine of God and defend it against innovations that were really unraveling the very fabric of Christianity.

33. 25:40

    Matthew Barrett

    That history is important, because today the same issues are here. In your church, you have to ask yourself: do we have a history? Is our understanding of history more like the radicals of the sixteenth century, or the Reformers? Because if it's more like the Reformers, then, as these other theologians have said, we can say with the Nicene Creed, 'We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.'

34. 26:12

    Host

    Amen — thank you for that. Shifting gears just a little bit here, Dr. Sanders — I'd love to pose this one to you on behalf of some parents. How would you encourage a parent to teach the doctrine of eternal generation to a child?

35. 26:37

    Fred Sanders

    I agreed to teach first through fifth graders on a rotating basis at my church, so now I've become the guy who supposedly knows what he's doing about that — I don't, and I'm totally not an expert in child development. But one thing I'd say is: if you're teaching kids, you have to get rid of the idea that you're going to do the one killer lesson that gets it all done, and you never have to come back to it. Have you met these little people? They're not full size yet, but they're complete humans — it's remarkable. You've got to have a plan for the long term, for coming back to ideas.

36. 27:11

    Fred Sanders

    I say the doctrine of eternal generation matters for young people because I'm afraid a lot of Christian kids are functioning with a kind of confusion that's not thematic for them. You hear this all the time — 'Jesus is God.' 'No, God is God.' 'No, Jesus is God's Son.' Boom, boom, boom — I've heard this a hundred times, and I want to intervene in that conversation and help, but it's already gone past, and now you're talking about something else. I think often we say, let's teach the children that Jesus is God — that's crucial, central, and concrete, and that'll be really helpful — and then we systematically avoid any reference to God the Father from then on. That's shortsighted; you've got to equip them with the whole thing.

37. 28:01

    Fred Sanders

    So really, it's the Father-Son relation you've got to get them thinking about, so they're not always thinking, 'If I take things to Jesus, I'm done — now I'm at God.' No — without diminishing the full deity of Christ at all, we've got to get all the way through to: guess what, the Son of God has a Father. God the Father is who God the Son wants you to know. We've just got to get them to that point — even just to put that in the basic furniture and equipment of their mind — and then trust them to be able to hear the Bible, read the Bible, and come to an understanding of it as they grow. I'm not directly teaching the doctrine of eternal generation at that point — I'm getting the Father-Son relation into their basic equipment for understanding the Christian life.

38. 28:47

    Kevin DeYoung

    You're more just settling in on inseparable operations, mainly perichoresis.

39. 28:56

    Fred Sanders

    Yeah, I do want the whole package — I just don't get greedy about it at any one particular teaching moment.

40. 29:01

    Host

    Oh, that's very helpful. A good follow-up: if we do erase eternal generation, what damage does that do to the gospel?

41. 29:13

    Fred Sanders

    Oh, it makes the whole thing brittle and hard to understand from the inside. It's something you can check the right boxes for and get an A on the doctrine test, but have no idea why the boxes are there or why it matters. Back in 2010, when I wrote The Deep Things of God, there was quite a bit of unrest in various levels of evangelicalism about coldness toward eternal generation — a lot of people were rejecting the doctrine of eternal generation. I thought, I'm not going to argue directly — my intention with that book was to make people who weren't sure about the doctrine really wish they could believe it. I wanted them to be envious of people who did affirm eternal generation, saying, 'Man, if I believed that, salvation would make a lot more sense' — salvation by adoptive sonship to the Father, through the incarnate Son, who is the eternal Son. That would be really cool. I think Pascal gives that advice: if you're trying to convince people of something, first make them wish it were true, then give them the evidence that it is true.

42. 30:18

    Host

    That's really good. Dr. Reeves, I'd love to come down to you really quick — we tend to think of the Eastern Fathers when we talk about the Nicene Creed, but we shouldn't forget about the West. Why should those here take time to read Augustine on the Trinity? And following up on Dr. Sanders's point earlier, how would you recommend and encourage them to do that?

43. 30:43

    Michael Reeves

    Augustine is so worth approaching because he is great in every sense — not right in every sense, but great. He's a great mind and a great heart. As you read On the Trinity, like Nicaea, he's seeking to defend and explore Nicene theology, and like Nicaea, he starts with God's self-revelation — that's how you get to know God. The key section of On the Trinity, the most important section that sets up the rest of the book, is where he's really asking: in what sense is there one God, and in what sense can we distinguish between the persons? His answer is: one God, substance — the persons are distinguished by their personal relations to one another.

44. 31:46

    Michael Reeves

    So there's this long exploration of the distinction between substance and relations, which is profoundly helpful. From there he goes on to look at created images of that unity and distinction — for example, how within the individual human soul, memory, intelligence, and will are somehow reflective of the divine being, or how God can be likened, in a sense, to lover, beloved, and love. Some of that creativity shows you why Augustine is worth engaging with — you'll read a lot of it and think, I'm not entirely sure what to make of some of that. Some of it is profoundly helpful, how he talks about substance and relations; some of the created images, you'll think, that's very creative, that's brilliant — but actually, it's good. It stretches you to think through what we're talking about when we talk about the three persons, the one substance of God.

45. 33:00

    Michael Reeves

    But there's something else Augustine brings that shows us how to do theology well. His whole intent in talking about the distinction between substance and relations, his whole exploration of the Trinity, is not just to give you a theological grammar so you can talk correctly — he's absolutely explicit that he wants to know God, to enter into the life of God, to worship him, to participate in this communion. That shows us what good theology is — worshipful theology — and Augustine models that well.

46. 33:51

    Michael Reeves

    I'd recommend, for some, a reading of Augustine On the Trinity, particularly the early sections, as Fred said. But also engage with Augustine elsewhere — if you've never read the Confessions, I'd say everyone should read the Confessions. There's a worshipful theology there, a depth of understanding of who God is and what it is to be in the image of God, that is profoundly shaping and helpful.

47. 34:28

    Host

    Does anybody else have anything to share on the Trinity? I know this has been a great resource for many of us, but I don't want to shut anybody off if you have more. All right — okay, we'll move forward. That's great.

48. 34:55

    Host

    Dr. Barrett, I'd love to come back to you. You warned against inserting functional subordination into the immanent life of the Trinity. Why is that so dangerous?

49. 35:00

    Matthew Barrett

    In many ways, what Fred said last night — I don't know that I could improve upon it. Fred, I don't know that I've ever heard you put it so visually — here's the Nicene line — and that really is the answer to the question, because we have to be very careful that what's under that line, we don't improperly begin to project above the line, as if that might define the Son in the immanent life of God as Son. There's been a long pattern of this kind of maneuver, in very different ways. Think of the twentieth century — someone like Moltmann, very influential, especially after the horrors of the Holocaust, trying to give a theology of hope, as he called it. In the end, he's taking the suffering of Christ in the flesh, and there's a strong sense in which he's projecting that not just onto the Son but onto the whole Trinity, so that he's not only skeptical of something like the Nicene Creed or later Chalcedon, but he'll start to say things like, 'God as God suffers, and is distraught, and is helpless.'

50. 36:36

    Matthew Barrett

    That's a very modern understanding of God that differs quite significantly from everything you've heard in this conference from the Fathers. But I think we have to be careful not to assume we're immune from all of that — I think we've been affected too. This is one example where we can be tempted to look at what's happening in the life of Christ in the incarnation and just assume, well, to be Son must mean he's less than the Father in glory, or to be Son in eternity — even apart from the world — must mean he's functionally subordinate to the Father. There are all kinds of metaphysical arguments; I pointed out some of them in my message about inseparable operations. But just to be practical for a minute: I don't think that's the way the New Testament describes the movement toward the incarnation.

51. 37:44

    Matthew Barrett

    What am I after here? Think about how Paul, writing to the Philippians in chapter two, introduces the humility of Christ — look at this humble Christ, by means of this humility, by means of this obedience, putting down his life. Or Hebrews 5, which talks about that — notice the contrast: although he was a Son, what comes next? He learned obedience by virtue of what he suffered. So whatever New Testament book you're in, there seems to be a hermeneutic behind it where they're assuming: yes, the Son must assume a human nature, not only to suffer on our behalf bodily, but also, in such grand humility, to fulfill the law. This is where we get into not just the passive but the active obedience of Christ.

52. 39:00

    Matthew Barrett

    If submitting is just something the Son does anyway from eternity, it really robs the gospel of its power at that point — specifically, of how amazing, and really how scandalous, it was for the disciples to realize this is the Son of God, and yet he has humbled himself to this degree. If you go the direction of functional subordination, it really flattens that out, in a way that takes away the punch at the end — that gospel punch that really brings us to our knees and says, 'I am not worthy, I don't deserve this gospel.' The Son of God himself humbled himself; he learned obedience even to the point of crucifixion. That's a very different — but a very biblical — contrast.

53. 39:51

    Kevin DeYoung

    Can I underline something Matthew was saying there? It relates to what Fred said too. With eternal generation, you're talking about impassibility, simplicity — these things all hold together. We're enough of a Protestant to say, okay, always test things against the Bible; people in the past can get things wrong; retrieval doesn't mean finding out what old, dead people said and assuming they're always right. But surely we can say these very smart, godly people — especially given how long these terms have lasted — if you're going to say, 'I don't think we need impassibility,' or 'I don't think we need eternal generation,' at least be aware that you're pulling a thread out of that sweater, and you may not see it or feel it, but you are unraveling something. All of those pieces were meant to hold something together.

54. 40:46

    Kevin DeYoung

    I'm sure, Mike, you remember every issue of Modern Reformation since the beginning, but there's one I've gone back to several times — you interviewed people somewhat outside the camp, and one, twenty-five or thirty years ago, was with Nicholas Wolterstorff on immutability and impassibility. He wrote a very moving little book, Lament for a Son — a well-known philosopher whose son, in his twenties, died in a hiking accident. I had to read that book in college; it's very raw and moving, and there are many parts of it that would be very helpful. And yet he — very self-consciously, because he's smart and honest about it — says, I'm rethinking the doctrine of impassibility; I don't find this view of a God who doesn't change and doesn't suffer to be what I feel I need here, in the moment of this deepest grief.

55. 41:40

    Kevin DeYoung

    He says in that interview — I think you can find it online, with Mike, in Modern Reformation — yes, I realize when I pull at that, I'm pulling at immutability, I'm pulling at simplicity, and even down at omniscience — all of these pieces. Todd Billings has written a really good book, out of his own experience with cancer, on impassibility that reaches the opposite conclusion — how much he needed, in his suffering, a God who doesn't suffer. But this is one example, and it's very relevant and resonant. Do you hold somebody's hand at a hospital bed and say, 'God feels your pain'? Don't say that. There's a lot you can say to convey sympathy — we have a sympathetic high priest, we worship a God who knows what it is to feel human pain. That's the point of the incarnation — to do the most un-godlike thing possible, namely, to suffer and to die. So we have resources to comfort people.

56. 42:48

    Kevin DeYoung

    But sometimes, quite unwittingly, we stumble into things the church has for almost two thousand years been very jealous to defend, because when you pull at that, you start to pull at everything, and you don't know what whirlwind you have reaped. When you think, 'I don't know a God who doesn't suffer — that doesn't sound like the God I want' — that's what Moltmann was doing in the face of the Holocaust. That's another clarion call for knowing our history — which is messy — but for knowing why these things have been there, and being very careful before we say, 'I don't think I need that piece of the puzzle,' when it's held a lot more together than you realize.

57. 43:35

    Host

    What an important thing for us as pastors to be considering — thank you for that. Just a couple more here. Dr. Horton — there is a famous story of the pope putting Anselm in a room of Eastern theologians and making him defend the filioque. Out of this comes his book on the Holy Spirit. What's his strongest argument against the filioque?

58. 44:08

    Michael Horton

    For those who don't know — the filioque is the addition to the Nicene Creed. We have to acknowledge that the Western church unilaterally altered the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and added the phrase 'and from the Son' — the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That was a huge sticking point between the East and the West; it became one of the major reasons that ultimately led to the schism between East and West. In the eleventh century, when Anselm was young, Pope Leo IX sent a messenger who placed articles of excommunication on the altar in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the Patriarch, the next week, did reciprocal excommunications against the pope. It stayed that way throughout the Middle Ages. We could talk for a long time about what's at stake here for the Eastern church.

59. 45:32

    Michael Horton

    What's at stake is the one source of the Godhead — is the Father the source of the Godhead, or is there some essence that is the source of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? That's the Eastern Orthodox polemic, sort of the way they put it. The concern of the West was against Arianism; the concern of the East, to oversimplify, was modalism — the thing they were most afraid of in the East was stressing the unity of God to the point where you didn't really have distinct persons. The problem the Western church was facing was a new growth of Arianism, especially in Spain, so they added 'and from the Son' — because if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then the Son has a more robust place in the Trinity. Once the pope started using that version in Rome, it caused great dissatisfaction.

60. 46:52

    Michael Horton

    I personally would wish the filioque were not in the Creed — I wish we hadn't added that. But I also agree with the early Eastern Fathers who said the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son — which, as we've been hearing, is the normal language of processions and missions in Scripture: from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit; from the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. So that's the language I wish we had — 'the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father through the Son' — rather than 'and the Son,' because there aren't two principles in the Godhead. So I'm a little — you always have to say, some of my best friends are Anselm — but this is not his best argument, in my view. He's kind of thrown into it. I think it's somewhat self-contradictory, and it has some of the problems the Greek church recognized as problems.

61. 48:20

    Michael Horton

    If you really want to see a great attempt to bring the Eastern and Western emphases together, it's in Calvin's Institutes, among other places — Calvin tries to explain how the Eastern and Western views can be harmonized, and what we should let go of, like Augustine's psychological analogy of will, intellect, and…

62. 49:00

    Kevin DeYoung

    Memory.

63. 49:01

    Michael Horton

    Memory. Thank you. Calvin says that's a good example of why analogies for the Trinity are bad. But anyway — I don't know, we're going a little into the weeds — but part of this shows that the church didn't get together at the Radisson in 325 and say, 'Let's come up with the most complicated dogma to dazzle centuries of people in our churches.' This really emerged out of crisis and debate, and terms that — in the West we used the term persona, and the Greeks said, well, persona sounds like actors on a stage — that's modalism. But you also can't use terms that would lead to subordination. There were a lot of people we'd consider heretics today who were just looking for the right way of saying it. Seeing the East and the West struggle over these things — it's not difficult to understand, and it's an ongoing conversation.

64. 50:36

    Kevin DeYoung

    Can I put in a good word for the filioque? I'm sure we agree — and I'm probably saying it right, I say 'filioque' the way I think of the Michael Jackson 'Smooth Criminal' line, 'Annie, are you okay?' — so I just think of it as 'filioque, okay.'

65. 50:51

    Michael Horton

    You want to bust a move for us?

66. 50:52

    Kevin DeYoung

    No, that's about as much moves as Presbyterians are allowed. But I think — and you're more of an expert than I am — I think we'd probably say what the East wanted to protect, they were right to want to protect, and what the West wanted to protect against Arianism, they were right to want to protect too. I think we'd also agree — yeah, not a good look, at the First Ecumenical Council, to add something on your own. On the other hand, historically it seems likely they didn't know they were adding something new — meaning, in the West, they weren't experts in Greek anymore, and were likely using the formulas and creeds as they had them, thinking, yes, this is the Nicene Creed. That's not to let them off the hook, but to say they probably didn't think, 'Hey, we just added something to the Creed.'

67. 51:50

    Kevin DeYoung

    But I think theologically, to put in a good word for the filioque clause — it does help us understand that there is a relation between the Son and the Spirit. An objection without it might be, well, how do you have the Son and the Spirit in relation to each other if they both simply proceed from the Father? To put it crassly: so the Son's here, and the Spirit's here — what's the connecting line between the two of them? I think the 'through the Son' language is probably more helpful, but I'm perfectly happy to say 'and,' in seeing that part of the strength is that it shows — and reflects, perhaps, in eternity, ad intra — what we see: that the Holy Spirit is the gift. The Son says, wait for the gift that's coming — is it a gift of the Father? But it's also the Spirit of Christ, who is manifesting the presence of Christ in the world. And if that has some eternal-sending kind of language behind it — so that's my brief defense, and I think you'd agree with all of that too.

68. 53:11

    Host

    Thank you for that little lively discussion — that's very helpful for all of us. The filioque is still a hot topic, right? It's good — it's very good.

69. 53:20

    Host

    Just lastly, as we prepare to head to the Anselm Houses — I believe four of you have had the opportunity to lead your breakouts thus far; you got to lead them yesterday. I'd love to hear what's been your favorite part of the breakouts in the Anselm Houses. Let's start with Dr. Reeves on the end, and we'll work back this direction.

70. 53:42

    Michael Reeves

    We enjoyed looking at Athanasius' Against the Arians, and enjoying how penetrating his intellect is as he looks at the nature of the Trinity. We were looking at a section where he says that the fullness of the Father is found in the being of the Son. What we were enjoying there is seeing the inseparability of the Father and the Son, and what that shows us about the very fullness of being found in God. I particularly enjoyed how there was a lot of really good pastoral comment coming out of that — people seeing the difference the nature of this God makes to how we can actually live as Christians, pray, encounter suffering, and live with joy before God rather than resentment. Seeing that pastoral working-out of the doctrine of God was a real pleasure.

71. 55:07

    Host

    That's great. Dr. Horton, have you had the opportunity?

72. 55:03

    Michael Horton

    We looked at, and will look at again today, Basil On the Holy Spirit — that work was formative in the time between Nicaea and Constantinople, fleshing out that third article. Not to repeat the whole thing, but he says the logic of the 'spirit-killers,' as he calls them, is the same as the Arians, even though they say they're not Arians — the same ontological subordination of the Son, that is the logic of Arianism, is the logic of the spirit-killers. And who are the spirit-killers? They're the people who say, 'You're an innovator.' Basil says, why am I innovating? You added to the liturgy, to the doxology — you have an unbiblical doxology: 'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.' You have to have it in the doxology as well as in the Creed. And they said, well, you're an innovator. And he says, no — in short, you're biblicists who are unbiblical. He shows them, manifestly, an amazing example of scriptural reasoning — just great exegesis: whatever is second is inferior, and whatever is third is inferior to whatever is second, he says — well, the first Adam and the last Adam, it's like that all the way through. He's brilliant. It's a really great, and very fairly brief, read.

73. 57:09

    Host

    That's great. Dr. Sanders, what's been your favorite part of your breakout so far?

74. 56:55

    Fred Sanders

    We're doing Gregory of Nazianzus, from his Five Theological Orations — the first oration, on the Son. It's been really great to open that text in a group and do a close read of it together, and track the dialectical brilliance of Gregory as he — does he put words in his opponent's mouth? He quotes objections from his opponents, then deals with them rhetorically, and yet he doesn't get lost in the details. If you've seen a bad online argument where someone just takes your line and cuts it up — what I'd call 'fisking' it, 'now I quote this, now I refute that,' line by line — he never gets lost in the weeds. He's always got a focus on understanding the glory of the Son as Son. I think, as Gregory says in a later oration, sonship is not a defect — it's not, 'Oh, he's God, but I'm sorry, he's also Son, I'm sorry to diminish him.' No — you have to point out that this is not a problem for the second person.

75. 58:16

    Host

    That's a good line. Dr. DeYoung?

76. 58:13

    Kevin DeYoung

    We had a great Socratic dialogue — it was Socrates through and through, minus the hemlock. It was so good. My two caveats were: I'm not great at Socratic dialogue, and I'm not a Cyril scholar. We looked at Cyril of Alexandria — here we're a little later, in the fifth century — and his debates with Nestorius. He writes it helpfully in a very stilted dialogue — 'Well, that is a fine objection, what else would you say?' 'Yes, Nestorius is a snake and a viper, I agree.' We had two brothers do a very fine dramatic reading.

77. 59:00

    Kevin DeYoung

    Nestorianism is one of those heresies where, if you're not careful — and I'd hate to even do a poll of all our churches, including mine — if you gave people Nestorius's view, they'd hear it and think, 'Well, I think that might be right,' because his argument is about whether Mary is Theotokos, the God-bearer — some translations give 'the mother of God,' which I think has some problems, but that's an English translation often given. Do we call Mary the mother of God, the God-bearer? We can hear that and, initially, especially as Protestants, feel really nervous about what that says about Mary. But it's first of all a Christological debate — it's really about Christ.

78. 59:47

    Kevin DeYoung

    Nestorius basically says: Mary can't be the mother of God — God doesn't have a mother. If she gave birth to God, then God has a beginning, and God, by definition, doesn't have a beginning; God can't be born; therefore she can't be the one who gave birth to God. So — okay, maybe I want to say that. Nestorius says she gave birth to the human nature of Christ, and the Logos was joined along with it. People are saying this now, too, and it's often an honest mistake, I think. But Cyril, brilliantly — again, lots of Scripture — 'My Lord,' spoken of the child in the womb; his name Immanuel, God with us. So he makes the brilliant argument — because Cyril was absolutely brilliant and absolutely implacable — that if you don't call Mary the bearer of God, or even the mother of God, then the one she gave birth to was either not God, or you've so separated the humanity from the deity that it's not a real union. So Cyril is the one who gives us the hypostatic union — the personal union of the two natures. Again, you hear Nestorius, and you think that might be right, and you need some good teachers, and you need Cyril to say: if that's right, you've just given yourself a whole lot of problems.

79. 01:01:26

    Kevin DeYoung

    This even came up last year — somebody wanted to say, well, let's talk about abortion; maybe there's ensoulment later on, maybe abortion is okay because you don't receive a soul, receive your personhood, until later. Well, not only is that bad on abortion, which is evil — you've just wrecked your Christology, if you become a person at some time other than conception. So all of this so often comes back to things the church has wrestled with for a long time.