Kevin DeYoung (0:05)

Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. Each week on Doctrine Matters, we explore the rich doctrine of the Christian faith. We'll pull from the church's long history, complex debates, and over the course of the year, the hope is that we'll begin to frame out what is a clear, accessible, systematic theology, be looking at different Christian doctrines and their relationship to each other. And the hope, Lord willing, is we will grasp more and more the riches and the beauty of God's word. Thanks for listening. Let's turn to this week's Doctrine Matters. Last week we began to talk about this doctrine of the Trinity. Francis Turreton famously said that the two most difficult doctrines, in his opinion, and I would take his opinion very seriously, have to do with the one God in three persons, the doctrine of the Trinity, and then the one person of Christ and the two natures. We'll come to that several weeks later with Christology. So we are dealing with mysteries here. But remember, a mystery is something that there are elements to it that belong to God. Deuteronomy 29, 29, There are things that he has revealed that belong to us. And then there are things that are hidden that belong to God. Mysteries that that language does not mean irrationalities, but rather things that, because we're not God, we can't fully comprehend. And the doctrine of the Trinity is one of them. But theologians have spent a lot of time trying to give the right terms. Often these are Greek terms or Latin terms to help us say what we want to say. Usually, you know, people can be impatient with these terms, but a big part of learning theology is learning the right vocabulary. And before you say, well, we just need the Bible, I don't need this vocabulary, well, you're going to be hard pressed to come up with better terms than the ones that have served the church for 1500 years. There's a reason that we still talk about these terms because they're important to say, well, when we say three and one, we mean this, but we don't mean that. So let's talk about a few of these technical terms. One is the term filioque. Filioque is Latin for and the son. So K meaning and at the end, and then like filial piety, filial sun. This is one of the main reasons why the Eastern Church and the Western Church split. Now, there's lots of other reasons that have to do with geography and polity and politics and history. And even this theological debate was wrapped up in a lot of other things about who calls the shots in the church. But the Nicene Creed, as most of us probably listening to this, would recite it as a language, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That's filio k. Now, it's true that that term was added later. So the Council of Nicaea is 325. But what we really know is the Nicene Creed is formulated at the next ecumenical council at Constantinople in 381. And then this term really a couple hundred years later before this term is added filioque. And when the Western church added it, it likely didn't think that it was doing anything new or novel. It was using probably existing liturgies. There were some translation issues. They likely thought that this was already part of the creed that they were passing on. But the Eastern church understandably thought, what are you doing? You can't just mess with the Nicene Creed and add something to it. And there were also differences of theology on whether this word should be there. Philly, you say, what's the big deal whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son? Well, in the Eastern Church, they were concerned that this would undermine the authority of the Father, that this would mean that the Son was of course equal with the Father in terms of ontology, but that there would be sort of two heads of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, and then the Spirit proceeds from both of them. Whereas the Western church, dealing with Arianism still and offshoots of it, was concerned that, well, without this, are we sure that we really have the full deity of the sun now the east, we ought to sympathize with its reasons for being wary of the clause and think probably most people were motivated then and for the most part now to try to protect true theological statements. At the same time, I, as a good Western Christian, and here we're talking about Catholics and Protestants who would both read the Creed in this way. I think there are good reasons biblically and theologically for including that statement about the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. 1 the Holy Spirit is sent from the Father and the son, John 16:7. And it stands to reason that this mission, this sending in time, would reflect something of eternal procession. So when we talk about proceeds from the Father and the Son, we are talking about eternally. So we're talking about this mystery. Just like the Son is begotten of the Father and the essence of the Father communicated to the Son, the essence, the godness of the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That's what the west is saying. Because in time we know that the Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son, and that it therefore stands to reason, reflected in some eternal procession. The second reason, the Holy Spirit is often called the Spirit of Christ. And if he is the Spirit of Christ, we should conclude he is the Spirit from Christ, not just in time, but from eternity. And third, Jesus tells the disciples that the Spirit glorifies him. He takes what is his will, declare it to them. If the Son glorifies the Father, speaks only what the Father gives him, and the Son is generated from the Father, not created, be careful there, but eternal generation from the Father, then the Spirit who glorifies the Son and speaks only what the Son gives him, must owe its origin in some respect. Again, not a created being, but its origin, the communication of its essence from the Father and the Son. And then a fourth reason. Christ breathed out the Spirit on his disciples. So if he has done that in time, breathing out the Spirit, shouldn't we think he breathed out the Spirit? That's what procession, or sometimes spiration means. Now it's true. John 15:26 says the spirit proceeds from the Father. It does not say there proceeds from the Son. But the latter truth is implied by the teaching in John 16 that whatever the Father has, the Son has as well. The Spirit does not proceed from the Father and the Son as if they were two separate principles, nor does the Spirit proceed from both as if the Father breathes into the Son and then the Son breathes again. So we don't want to say that. It's not like passing a baton. The Father passes the Spirit to the Son and then the Son passes the Spirit on. No, the breathing power, as Turreton puts it, is numerically one. The language of through the Son means the Father is the fountain of Deity. So proceeds. That's another way to put it, that was trying to find some common ground between east and west is say, well, the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. So not two principles here, but from the Father through the Son. This is called the double procession of the Spirit, Father and Son. Filioque and the Son yes, it's complicated if you're driving in the car or folding laundry. It's hard to grasp this reading the page, let alone listening to a five minute explanation. But it does matter. It does tell us something. That the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And that means our theology is according to the Word and our worship by the Spirit are always connected. There is a profound truth there of connecting the Word and Spirit in teaching this double procession, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Let's see if we have time for a couple other mind bending terms. Here's a second one, Greek term, Paricharesis, John 14:11. Jesus says, I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. So what does it mean? I am in the Father, the Father is in me. We usually understand these verses to be about Christ's deity, and that's true. But they also speak to the mutual indwelling. That's what we mean, Parichoresis, the mutual indwelling. Not just Father and Son, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit, distinct persons. And yet here, to use an analogy, we don't want to think of them as three faces in the yearbook. That you turn to the divine yearbook and say, oh, there's that's, that's the Father and then that's the Son. And then here's a third picture and you can line them all up and there they are. Paricharesis reminds us that the Father indwells the Son, the Son indwells the Spirit, the Spirit indwells the Father. And you can reverse the order in each pair. The Greek term is parakaresis. In Latin, circumenscession. Another word, circulatio is also used. You hear our English word of circulation. It's metaphorically a way to describe the unceasing circulation of the divine essence, that each person is in the other two while the others are in each one. So at risk of putting this in physical terms, but we have to just grasp it some concrete way of understanding this. You might say that parakoresis means all three persons occupy the same divine space. Think of the, the yearbook analogy. We cannot see God without seeing all three Persons at the same time. So. So the three Persons of the Trinity are all fully in one another, and each Person of the Trinity is in full possession of the Divine essence. Now again, let's remember what we've said before. The Father is not the Son, Son is not the Spirit, Spirit is not the Father. So Parichoresis does not deny any of that. It wants to uphold that. But what Parichoresis wants to maintain is you cannot have one Person, though distinct, without having the other two. And you cannot have any person of the Trinity without having the fullness of God. Here's how Augustine put it. Each are in each, and all, in each, and each in all, and all are one. Very profound. Here it is again from Augustine, each talking about the three Persons, each are in each. So each person is in each person, and all in each and each and all and all are one. So we have to rely on these careful distinctions. We don't want to think of parakoresis, some have wrongly said this before as a kind of trinitarian dance that has social trinitarian implications. And it really undermines the truth that parakrasis is meant to protect. Because some people have said, oh, that word choreography. Doesn't that come. They're related. And this is like a dance and the three persons are doing a waltz or a jig together. But that really. That's really the opposite, because that very picture is of three, you know, faces in the yearbook, three people that are so close that they're doing the waltz together, when this is saying really something different, that they circulate in one and another. How can three persons simultaneously share the same undivided essence? That's the question. And the answer we want to give is not that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit waltz in step with each other, but the answer is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit co inhere in such a way that the persons are always and forever with and in one another, yet without merging, without blending, without confusion. That's the doctrine of parakoresis. Now, really quickly, just one more, because your heads aren't full already. And this is the Greek word taxis. It looks like the English word taxis, T, A, X I s. Taxis is the Greek word for order. In trinitarian theology, taxis is not meant to suggest a hierarchy of persons, but an order of relations whereby God's inner and outer life is from the Father through the Son by the Spirit. That's an order. It's never in the reverse order. It's never from the Son through the Father, from the Spirit by the Son, you know. No, there is an order. Now, this was a big debate eight or nine years ago, and I really think that, though there was a lot of heat, there was a lot of light too, in this debate about how do we understand the persons of the Trinity? Are they distinguished by eternal relations of authority and submission? In what way might we say that the Son is subordinate to the Father? And like so many things, especially in trinitarian theology, we have to just slow down and say, okay, what do you mean? Because there are plenty of good theologians who talk about the Son as subordinate to the Father, but we have to be careful. We mean. We don't want to mean any ontological subordination. That's Arianism. That they're not somehow equal in power, rank and glory. Nor do we want to suggest that the way we distinguish among them is by an eternal relation of authority and submission. We've already seen that the tradition of the Church says we distinguish by their personal properties, which is that the Father is unbegotten, of none, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But there is a way properly to say the Son is sub ordered, that just means ordered under, not in rank, power, glory, or essence under the Father and then this, the Spirit. So this is the. This doctrine of taxes that there is an order. Zacharias or Sinus, for example, author of the Heidelberg Catechism, says, the Father, therefore, is greater than the Son, not as to his essence, in which the Son is equal with the Father, but as to his office and human nature, so that the Son took on a human nature. In other words, we can speak of an order so long as we understand we're not talking about. We are talking about Christ's mediatorial office and his earthly mission, not about His Divine Person being inferior or subjugated to the Father. So Ursinus says that we can talk about the persons of the Godhead being distinguished by their works ad intra. It's Latin for on the inside, and by their mode of operating, ad extra, that is, on the outside. So that first distinction there, ad intra, has to do with the way in which the three Persons relate to one another. The Father we call the First Person of the Trinity because He's the fountain of divinity. The Son is the Second Person because the divine essence is communicated to him from the Father. And the Spirit we call the Third Person not because he's in third place, but because the divine essence is communicated from the Father through the Son. So that's what we mean, ad intra, the Trinity inside, and then ad extra, how they relate to their creatures. Ursinus argues that while all the works toward their creatures come by the common will and power, that is inseparable operations, yet they are inflected in certain ways. The Father works through the Son, the Son works by the Holy Spirit. It would not make sense to say the Son sent the Father or that the Spirit breathed out the Son. No, there is an order to it. Father sends the Son, the Son saves and sanctifies by the Spirit. That's what we mean by taxes. And so in a qualified, nuanced sense, we can talk about the Father just again, very carefully, in a certain sense and not in another, as being greater than the Son or the Son being subordinate to the Father, but we must be careful because it's easily misunderstood and we never want to undermine the unity of the persons, one essence, one will, sharing in the same perfections. So the three persons are not distinguished by roles of authority and submission. They are distinguished ad extra, that is by their mode of operating, by their workings. One work of the triune God, the Father works by the Son, the Son works together with the Father, then through the Spirit, they're distinguished ad intra. And that's reflected ad extra. And the word that helpfully highlights what this doctrine is about is this word taxis so an order in how their generation and procession works and then toward the outside world, how they work in the world that the Father sends the Son and the Son then breathes out the Holy Spirit. Thanks again for joining us on Doctrine Matters. I'm your host Kevin DeYoung. Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to Doctrine Matters and if this has been encouraged encouraging, consider passing it on to others. If you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine, you can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini systematic theology book called Daily Doctrine. It's available in print or audio from Crossway.org the Doctrine Matters podcast is produced by Crossway. To learn more, visit Crossway.org.