Transcript

Hi folks, welcome back to History 1 and our History 1 Highlights videos.

This is Highlights from Unit 5, and today we're going to be talking about Arianism, the 4th century ecumenical councils, the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

We're going to be talking a little bit about the church's pneumatology, or understanding of the Holy Spirit.

and the Nicene Creed.

And first we're going to start with a little bit of myth busting because there are a lot of myths out there about the Emperor Constantine.

Now before we get to that, just a quick reminder This is the point in the semester when you start to get tired, and tired means sloppy, and you start to read in a way where you're not really absorbing the material.

And I know that there's a lot of reading for this class, but that is the nature of history.

And so remember that you need to read carefully and read for understanding.

You can't just skim it or read like you're reading for entertainment, like you'd read something on the internet.

This has to be read for the depth of the content so that you understand it.

Because remember, when you go to write your essay, your essays are supposed to be written as though you are teaching this material.

So you need to not just learn it, but learn it well enough to turn around and teach it.

So make sure that you are highlighting in the text when you read so that you can reference your highlights later and not have to read it all over again when you go to write your essay.

Okay, let's do a little bit of myth busting.

The Emperor Constantine.

There are so many myths out there about Constantine, we don't have time to cover them all, but let me just hit you with four quick ones.

The first one is that the Emperor Constantine forced the Doctrine of the Trinity on the Council of Nicaea, that somehow he was the driving force behind what became Orthodoxy, and he forced this thing called the Doctrine of the Trinity on the Church.

Well, by now you know that is completely untrue because the Doctrine of the Trinity is not new in the 4th century, but also we know from the sources and from Constantine's own letters that before the Council of Nicaea, he actually leaned toward Arianism.

He thought Arius might be right, and at the end of the day, he didn't realize how important the doctrine of the Trinity was, because he actually said, going into the Council, hey, why don't you guys focus on something more important, like settling the date for Easter?

Why are you so upset about this thing called this doctrine of the Trinity?

So he didn't even get how important it was, and if anything, If he was going to try to force anything on the Council, it would have been Arianism.

And in fact, we know that later at least one of his sons did try to force Arianism on the Empire unsuccessfully.

So that's the first myth busted.

Constantine did not try to force the doctrine of the Trinity on the Council of Nicaea.

The Council of Nicaea came to the conclusions that it did because it was interested in maintaining the tradition.

And as I always say, remember that orthodoxy is that which is most consistent with the orthodoxy of the previous generation.

So at every point in the process of the development of doctrine, The task of the church fathers, and they understood it this way, was to determine the course that was most faithful to the tradition that they had received.

And so in defining the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea, the bishops there were only clarifying what the church had always believed.

Okay, another myth about the Emperor Constantine is that he decided what books would be in the Bible.

And again, for those of you taking the class, you've read the chapter on the Bible, the canon, the development of the New Testament in the book, and so you know this is completely untrue.

The Emperor Constantine did not decide what books would be in the Bible.

There's even a book out there that somebody wrote called something like Constantine's Bible.

It's a terrible book.

Don't buy it.

Don't read it.

But it tries to make the case that because the Emperor Constantine had commissioned some copies of the Bible that he therefore decided what books would be in the Bible, and that somehow influenced the rest of the church.

Completely untrue, and of course the development of the canon and the Christian Bible has a history all its own, quite apart from the Emperor Constantine.

So you can read about it in Reading the Church Fathers, but that is a myth.

Constantine did not decide what books would be in the Bible.

Another myth about Constantine is that he is the one who created a sort of marriage of church and state, which is usually presented as a terrible thing and ruins the church, and that once the church got in bed with the state, that it was all downhill from there.

Now, to be fair, there are some good reasons to question the marriage of church and state, but it's not that Constantine invented that.

In fact, There had never been a time in human history when government and religion were separate.

Government and religion were all one thing.

Even look at the Old Testament, the way, you know, originally the people of the Hebrews were not even supposed to have kings because God was their king.

And in other cultures, the royalty, the royal family are considered, you know, quasi divine.

So religion and government were always intertwined.

And ironically, it was the Emperor Constantine who invented the separation of church and state with the Edict of Milan in the year 313, which is a translation of that in the book, so you'll read that.

But the point is that the Edict of Milan gave freedom of worship to everyone in the empire.

It, of course, legalized Christianity, but it gave freedom of worship to everyone.

And although Constantine would favor Christianity, he even goes so far as to say, look, You all have the right to be wrong in your worship.

You all have the right to worship according to your conscience.

This myth is so ironic because Constantine did not invent the union of church and state.

Constantine invented the separation of church and state, quite the opposite.

Finally, the last myth that we'll go over right now is that the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

He did not do that.

That would eventually happen with a later emperor, Theodosius, in the year 380, but Constantine, in the early fourth century, Only made Christianity legal and, to a certain extent, favored by giving certain privileges to Christian bishops and doing some other things that would allow Christian practice more freedom in the empire.

But he never made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

That would happen later.

Okay, another myth busted.

So those are just four myths about the Emperor Constantine that we need to get out of the way right away.

And now we can move on to one of our major topics in our highlights from Unit 5. And that is the topic of the heresy of Arianism.

Okay, so as you know from reading the text, In about the year 319, we see a priest in the city of Alexandria.

This priest's name was Arius, and he sort of called attention to himself by preaching something that his bishop, whose name was Alexander, his bishop had to call him out for preaching something that was inconsistent with the tradition.

Now, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, and yes, I don't make these things up, but that's his name, Alexander of Alexandria, he confronted Arius and told him he had to stop teaching what he was teaching and bring himself back in line with the tradition.

Arius refused.

And Arius accused his bishop, Alexander, of heresy as well.

And so now what we have is a situation where a priest is accusing his bishop of heresy, the bishop is accusing the priest of heresy, and they come to a kind of standoff.

So exactly what was it that Arius was preaching that got him in trouble?

Well, whether he knew it or not, Arius had borrowed two errors from the Gnostics.

And let me just say, Arianism is not Gnosticism.

It is not an evolution of Gnosticism.

It's not an offshoot of Gnosticism.

It's not even really that related to Gnosticism, except Arius had accidentally borrowed two major mistakes from the Gnostics.

The first was that there could be degrees of divinity.

And for, you know, Judeo-Christian monotheists, there are no degrees of divinity.

A being is either divine or not, and only one being is divine, and that being is God, right?

Okay, but that still begs the question of the doctrine of the Trinity, and we'll get there.

But the point is that Arius' solution to the doctrine of the Trinity was going to be essentially rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity in favor of a Christology where Jesus Christ is quasi-divine, degrees of divinity, more divine than you or me, but less divine than God the Father.

And so this idea that there could be degrees of divinity is something that we already saw in Gnosticism, and it's an error, it's a heresy, but Arius picks up on this.

The other error that Arius Accidentally borrowed from the Gnostics was the idea that you could separate the man Jesus from a spiritual entity called the Christ, that you could separate Jesus from the Christ.

This is an error of many of the Gnostics, and incidentally, it's also the error of the so-called quest for the historical Jesus, which we saw in the 20th century, trying to separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith.

And Irenaeus of Lyon had said this all the way back in the second century, You cannot separate Jesus from the Christ.

They are, he is, one person.

Okay, so here's the problem though.

If you are an adoptionist in the 3rd century, and somebody says to you, oh well you deny the divinity of Christ, but how do you deal with John chapter 1? In the 3rd century, an adoptionist could probably get away with saying, Oh, the Gospel of John isn't in my Bible, or I interpret that a different way, or something like that.

But by the fourth century, the New Testament is so much more formalized and established in terms of its table of contents, no one can get away with saying the Gospel of John isn't in my Bible, right?

So now, if you're an adoptionist, you have to deal with John 1.1. And this is what Arius does.

Arius was teaching An evolution of a form of adoptionism in which he dealt with John chapter 1 by separating Jesus from the Christ.

So, like the earlier adoptionists, he said Jesus was a mere man who achieved perfection through discipline and perfect obedience to God.

He achieved perfection and then God rewarded him with an elevated status.

But, to accommodate John chapter 1, Arius then said the Christ was a spiritual being, still a created spiritual being, not the divine logos, not the second person of the Trinity, but a created spiritual being, perhaps an angelic being, who was created Just before the rest of creation, so that he could then be the agent of creation for the rest of creation.

This is how he would interpret the verse in John 1 that says, all things were created through him.

So the Christ is this created being, created a few minutes before the rest of creation, so that the Father could create through this other created being.

And then when the man Jesus came along and achieved perfection, Part of the reward that Jesus gets from God is that at his adoption he is indwelt with this Christ spirit who is preexistent but not eternally so.

Preexistent but not eternal because he's created.

So whether you want to talk about Jesus and or the Christ as the son of God, for Arius that sonship is an adopted sonship and not an eternal sonship.

And so the Son of God, if you want to call him that, Arius would say, well, he hasn't always existed.

He isn't eternal.

There was a time, Arius would say, when the Father existed, but the Son didn't. The Son hadn't been created yet, and that's where Arius got his famous slogan, there was a time when he was not, meaning there was a time in the time before time When the Son of God hadn't been created yet.

And so, for Arius and his followers, Jesus Christ is more divine than you or me, but less divine than God the Father.

He is essentially a man who became a God.

Still a created God, but a man who became a God.

And this is the point, because this is the exact opposite of Orthodox or mainstream Christology.

For the mainstream , Jesus Christ is God who became a man, not a man who became a God.

Orthodox Christology is a Christology of descent, and this is the so-called kenosis in Philippians 2. That word kenosis is just a transliteration of the Greek word for he emptied himself, right?

So the incarnation is a self-emptying, a self-limiting, in which the divine second person of the Trinity becomes human.

He starts out as God and becomes human, not the other way around.

But for Arius, he starts out as human and becomes a God.

And I often use an analogy when I'm talking about this difference between a Christology of descent, which is Orthodox Christology, and a Christology of Ascent, which is Aryan Christology.

A good analogy for this is the difference between Superman and Batman.

Now, I understand that not everyone's culture is as familiar with these superheroes as perhaps mine is, but go with me on this analogy.

And by the way, I go into this in much more depth in my book, From Star Wars to Superman.

So if you're interested in using these analogies of superheroes, to learn and to teach Orthodox Christology as opposed to heresy.

This is from Star Wars to Superman, Christ figures in science fiction and superhero films.

So here's what I'm talking about.

Superman came from somewhere else.

He's not originally one of us.

He comes from above us, right?

To quote the old Superman TV show, he's that Strange visitor from another planet who, what, comes down, as we say in the Creed, he came down to be a kind of savior figure for us.

But he starts out as above us and becomes one of us.

Batman, on the other hand, is not from another planet.

His only superpower is that he's filthy rich and also kind of crazy.

But the point is that Batman starts out as a regular guy, But through discipline and willpower, he achieves hero status.

So, Superman is someone who is not one of us, but becomes one of us to be a savior figure for us.

That's like the real Jesus, the Christology of descent.

Batman is a regular guy who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps and becomes a hero.

A man who becomes a hero, That's more like the Christology of ascent in the Arian Christology.

Now, just as an aside, don't confuse Christology of ascent with the ascension of Jesus.

The ascension of Jesus is a completely different concept when he returns to the heavenly realm at the end of his earthly ministry.

Set that aside.

That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about a Christology of ascent, ascent meaning he He is elevated in status.

Starts out as a regular guy and becomes a God.

That's Arianism and it's wrong because Orthodox Christology is that Jesus Christ starts out as God.

Philippians 2. He was in the form of God and then he became human.

He is God who became a human, not a human who became a God.

And so that is the difference between Orthodox Christology and Arianism.

And by the way, always remember that I've got the helpful charts in this book.

In reading the Church Fathers, check out the chart on page 339, especially when it comes time to write your essay.

You're going to want to look at that chart because it lays it out very clearly.

So remember, As you look at that chart, that Arianism is an evolution of adoptionism.

Adoptionism is that heresy that diminishes or denies the divinity of Jesus, right?

And Arianism follows in that track.

And even though Arianism will now, because it has to, because of scripture, even though Arianism will now ascribe a quasi divinity to Jesus, like almost like the Arians are saying, Alright, we'll give you that he's sort of divine, but not fully divine, as divine as the Father, right?

That is the 4th century evolution of adoptionism.

Now, to be fair, they are trying to protect monotheism, because in the mind of Arius, if the Son is as divine and as eternal as the Father, You know, doesn't that make them brothers as opposed to father and son?

Doesn't that make it two gods?

Well, it doesn't. And the reason it doesn't is the doctrine of the Trinity, which, you know, we are understanding now how the mainstream church is clarifying that.

But the point is that Arius got it wrong because, like earlier adoptionists, he assumed that for the Son to be begotten meant that he was created, and he could not get out of that mode of thinking of Jesus Christ as a created being.

Even if for him there's a spiritual indwelling, still that is a created entity that indwells the man Jesus.

And so that means that for him, even that spiritual entity, the Christ, is not eternal.

There was a time before he existed.

It also means that for the Arians, Jesus Christ could sin, and probably did at one time.

Some of the followers of Arius believed that Jesus Christ had actually been a terrible guy at one time, and they concocted a whole conversion story for him, that he became a kind of a saint after having been a terrible sinner.

But the problem with all of this is its implications for our salvation, for soteriology, right?

Because as I always say, rule number three, Christology informs soteriology.

And so if you start with an Arian Christology, You must end with a soteriology, a salvation by works, because it reduces Jesus Christ to not a savior, really, but a kind of pioneer, an example to follow, who shows us how to become perfect.

But if we are going to be saved, if we're going to receive salvation, we have to follow his example and become perfect too.

And so the message of Jesus in the Arian conception is, Jesus became a God, and so can you.

And if you do, you will be saved.

But if you don't, well, that's on you, but you won't be saved, because salvation is by achieving perfection.

In a sense, it's a self-salvation.

And so, Orthodoxy then, in the 4th century, is now a kind of middle way between the two extremes of Arianism on the one side and modalism on the other.

So we still have modalism.

Modalism is still around from the third century.

And as you can see in the chart, orthodoxy is this place of balance in between the extremes.

Modalism is basically saying Jesus is really nothing like you because he's just the father in disguise.

Arianism is saying Jesus is exactly like you in every way, or you need to be exactly like him if you hope for salvation.

Whereas Orthodoxy says that Jesus is fully human like you, yet he is still unique among humanity because he is still the incarnation of the divine Logos.

And this is going to be the whole point for soteriology for salvation, because what we're going to see when we finally come full circle to the theories of atonement is that in all of them, the point is that both of Christ's natures are required for our salvation, both a full humanity in which he is like us in every way except sin, and a full divinity in which he is as divine So, he is fully human like us, yet he is still unique among humanity.

And as we've seen so far, Tertullian and especially Novation in the third century have paved the way For the bishops of Alexandria, Alexander and then his successor Athanasius, paved the way for their rebuttal of Arianism with several really important points.

And we're not going to go into them in detail now, but I just want to name them and point them out.

The doctrine of eternal generation, right?

That becomes really the explanation for why the doctrine of the Trinity works And it's not polytheism, and it's not modalism, and also why Arianism is not an adequate solution to the problem.

So, eternal generation.

The other one is that the doctrine of consubstantiality means that the Son, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, must be equally divine So that what is begotten of divinity is divinity.

And so you cannot say that begotten means created.

Arius was wrong about that.

What is begotten of divinity is divinity.

So the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

Of course, the Holy Spirit is too.

But the point of this is that this allows the mainstream church to To propose a rebuttal for Arius' slogan, there was a time when he was not, the rebuttal for that is always a father, always a son.

Because if there was a time when the son didn't exist, if there was a time before the son was created, that would mean that there was a time when the father wasn't yet a father, which would mean that the father had gone from not being a father It would mean that the first person of the Trinity had become a father, which would be a change.

And as we know, divinity must be immutable and cannot change.

So the mainstream rebuttal to Arius' slogan, you know, there was a time when he was not, the mainstream rebuttal to that is always a father, Always a son.

There has always been a father and he has always been the father because he has always had a son and there has always been a son.

The son is the same divinity and same eternity as the father.

And again, we have Novation especially to thank for setting the stage for Alexander and Athanasius to be able to say these things.

And then finally, just this idea that orthodoxy is this middle way in between the extremes.

It's the both-and answer to the question, rejecting the either-or answers.

It's not the case that Jesus is nothing like you, as the modalists would imply.

It is not the case that Jesus is It is exactly like you in the sense that you have to become exactly like him in order to be saved, as the Arians would imply.

It is the case that there's a kind of both-and answer to the question, which is that Jesus Christ is fully human, as we are, and yet still unique among humanity because he has this divine nature which is necessary for our salvation Otherwise, salvation itself would be reduced to a kind of works righteousness.

Okay, well I'm not going to go into detail about the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea or even the outcome of the Council of Nicaea.

The essentials of that are in the book and you'll be reading about that.

But what we do want to point out is that in the time between the Council of Nicaea, our first ecumenical council in the year 325, between that time and the Council of Constantinople, our second ecumenical council in the year 381, what happened in that in-between time is that All of the questions that had been asked about the second person of the Trinity were now being asked about the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

If you look at the chart in the book on page 366, there's a chart comparing the creeds the template creed that they started with, then the creed that they wrote at Nicaea in 325, and then finally the creed as it was finished in 381. And you'll notice that there's a huge difference because that third paragraph, all that stuff about the Holy Spirit, really gets added at the Council of Constantinople in 381. All they were willing to say in 325 in the creed is, We believe in the Holy Spirit, we know there is one, but the church's pneumatology, the church's theology of the Holy Spirit had not yet been really clarified.

Of course, we know that the church believed in the Holy Spirit, the mainstream church believed in the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

That was not really a question, except that after the Council of Nicaea, Some of those folks who had leaned toward the Arian side and who were reluctant to get on board with the divinity, the full divinity of the Son, some of them after the Council said, okay, we'll give you the divinity of the Son, but we just can't get on board with the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

And so now there were people questioning the divinity of the Holy Spirit in that time between the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

And so it came down to the theologians of that in-between era to clarify the church's understanding of the Holy Spirit.

This would be the Cappadocian fathers in the East, Basil and the two Gregories, and then Ambrose of Milan in the West, right?

And so here we have all of those questions that were asked about the Son previously are now being asked about the Holy Spirit.

Is the Holy Spirit Created or uncreated?

The Holy Spirit is uncreated.

The Holy Spirit is not a created being.

But on the other hand, we're not going to use the word begotten to speak about the Spirit, because that's for the Son only.

So we're going to settle on this new word.

It's not really new, but it's new in this usage.

The Holy Spirit proceeds.

What about, is it acceptable to worship the Holy Spirit?

Yes, it is.

It is acceptable to worship the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is divine as the Father and the Son are.

Now, as an aside, it's important to notice, even though the Creed affirms the divinity of the Holy Spirit by calling the Holy Spirit Lord and giver of life, still, that word Some people wanted to at the time, but it was perceived that if they did that, that too many people might have a hard time getting on board and accepting the creed.

You may think that these creeds were written to exclude people, and in some ways the creeds are written to exclude heresy.

But here's an example of how the creeds were written actually to try and include as many people as possible.

And so in an effort, you know, not to alienate or to alienate as few people as possible, They did not put the word consubstantial in that third paragraph of the Creed, but it is clear that it does apply to the Holy Spirit.

And so we see that the Spirit is the source of life, along with the Father and the Son.

And so, you know, the Holy Spirit is divine and worthy of worship.

And we can say consubstantial with the Father and the Son, co-eternal with the Father and the Son.

Same divinity, same eternity.

And so the church clarifies, at least to a certain extent, its belief in the Holy Spirit.

Now, again, I'm not going to go through the creed here line by line.

But I do that in Trinity 101. So if you follow that section in Trinity 101, I go through the Creed line by line and talk about each line, what it means, what it's there to refute, because every line in the Nicene Creed is there for a reason.

There's no fluff.

So I talk about what it's there to refute or affirm, and then I go a little bit into the controversy of the filioque here, and then much more in depth in reading the Church Fathers.

I have a section on the controversy over the filioque, which is the Western edition of those words, and the Son, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Those three words in English are one word in Latin, filioque, and they're not in the original version of the Creed.

And to this day, they're not in the version of the Creed that our Eastern brothers and sisters say.

And so it is a bit of a controversy, but I'm not going to get into that here.

And you don't need to get into that in your essays either.

Don't really worry about pneumatology at all or the filioque in your essays.

I'm going to wrap this up now with a few comments about the big picture.

So here's the big picture.

In each stage along the way of the development of doctrine, The both-and answer to the question is the right answer.

It is the orthodoxy of the mainstream over against the extremes on the fringes of the church who seem to prefer an either-or answer or a more simplistic answer.

So orthodoxy is that mainstream sort of middle way that holds intention a balance of the both and and rejects the either or.

And so specifically, here's what I mean.

In the early stage, perhaps, you know, we're thinking of the first couple of centuries, right?

It's really all about Christology in terms of the two natures of Jesus Christ.

He has a human nature where he is fully human as we are in all ways except sin.

And he has a divine nature in which he is fully divine with the same divinity as the Father and the Spirit, right?

And so it's all about these two natures.

And the heresies on the fringes will pick one or the other and emphasize that so much that, you know, they de-emphasize the other one.

So, you know, we have adoptionism that emphasizes the humanity and diminishes or denies The divinity of Christ, and we have the docetism and gnosticism, which emphasizes the divinity such as it is, and diminishes or denies the humanity of Christ.

Then as we move into the third century, And we start to get deeper into the doctrine of the Trinity and clarifying that, it becomes a question of the unity and distinction between the three persons of the Trinity.

And we have heresies that emphasize the unity so much, modalism, that they diminish the distinction of persons.

And the son is reduced to simply the father in disguise, which again falls into the error of diminishing his humanity.

But then on the other extreme, we have adoptionism and we will have the beginning of Arianism that will emphasize the distinction of persons.

In other words, separate the father and son so much that it's really no longer a trinity at all, and usually what ends up happening is the divinity of Jesus Christ is diminished or denied.

And so even though Arius has a kind of quasi-divinity, that he will allow for the Son, for the second person.

It is a lesser divinity.

It is an acquired divinity.

And so it is clearly not the same divinity as the Father.

And so that becomes the problem.

And then the mainstream orthodoxy is this balance of unity and distinction of the persons in which the three persons of the Trinity are one, But they're not all the same.

They're one, but not one and the same.

They're distinct, but they're not separate.

And that's the balance.

Now, where we are going with this is that later Christology will sort of take it to the next level and ask the same questions that were just being asked of the three persons of the Trinity.

To what extent are they one?

To what extent are they distinct?

They will ask those questions of the two natures of Christ.

So in other words, saying, okay, Starting with the assumption that Christ has these two natures, what is the relationship between them?

How unified are they?

How distinct are they?

Can we blur the line between them?

Can we separate them?

That's going to be where we're going into the 5th century.

That's where we are in the process of everything.

One last comment that I want to make here.

Circling back to the doctrine of appropriation, remember that the doctrine of appropriation says that anything you can say about one person of the Trinity, you can say about the other two persons of the Trinity, or anything you can say about one person of the Trinity, you can say about the Trinity as a whole, or vice versa, with a few exceptions.

Now, this doctrine of appropriation is really kind of a corollary to the doctrine of consubstantiality, right?

Because all three persons of the Trinity are the same divinity and same eternity.

And it's also a corollary to the doctrine of inseparable operation, right?

Because all divine activity is the product of all three persons of the Trinity.

Well, you know, therefore, anything you can say about one person of the Trinity, you have to also be able to say about the other two persons of the Trinity.

If the Father is Creator, the Son is Creator.

The Holy Spirit is Creator.

If the Son is Savior, the Father is Savior.

The Holy Spirit is Anything you can say about one person of the Trinity or about the Trinity in general, you can say about any of the other persons of the Trinity with a few exceptions.

And these exceptions are precisely those personal properties that are unique to one person of the Trinity only.

So the exceptions to the doctrine of appropriation are the personal properties of the three persons of the Trinity.

And technically speaking, there are really only four concepts that work here.

Now, there are some other names you could throw in, which we talk about in class, and so I won't get into all of that now.

But the four really important concepts that each are unique to only one person of the Trinity are as follows, right?

Only the Father is unbegotten.

All three persons of the Trinity are uncreated.

All three persons of the Trinity are creator and not created beings.

But only the Father is unbegotten.

Only the Father is that one person of the Trinity who is not dependent on another person of the Trinity for his very existence.

Only the Father is unbegotten.

The second word is begotten.

Only the Son is begotten.

The Son is And even though it's the case that the Holy Spirit is also caused by and dependent on, we don't use the word begotten of the Holy Spirit.

We only use the word begotten to speak of the Son.

Only the Son is begotten.

Only the Father is unbegotten.

Only the Son is begotten or generated.

We also have another word for the Son, which is, only the Son is incarnate.

Even though, inseparable operation, even though all three persons of the Trinity are active in the incarnation, yet only one person of the Trinity actually became incarnate, only one person of the Trinity actually became human, and that's the second person of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus Christ.

Only the Son is begotten or generated.

Only the Son is incarnate.

And then the word that we have for the Holy Spirit is, as I said, you know, kind of late comer to the process in the fourth century.

It's the word that was left and got attached to the Holy Spirit.

It's a word we're stuck with, and it really requires a lot of unpacking, which is why I have a whole section on that here in the section on the filioque.

But the point is this.

Only the Spirit proceeds.

Whatever we determine proceeding means, and check the book for that, but only the Holy Spirit proceeds.

And so these are the exceptions to the doctrine of appropriation, and these are really the only concepts that apply to one person of the Trinity only.

Only the Father is unbegotten.

We might also say that only the Father is the first cause or the ultimate source of all creation, but we have to be careful with that because the Son and the Spirit are also source of creation because, as we know, John tells us, all things were created through the Son and all three persons of the Trinity are Creator and were involved in creation.

So that's a tricky one.

But only the Father is unbegotten.

Only the Son is begotten.

Now, of course, in the context of the Incarnation, you know, only the Son is Jesus, only the Son is Christ, only the Son is Logos.

So there are other sort of names that we can put on the second person of the Trinity as well.

And then for the third person of the Trinity, only the Holy Spirit proceeds.

Now, we may also say that as a corollary to the proceeding, or as a manifestation of the proceeding, or something like that, we could also say that only the Holy Spirit indwells believers.

But that one's tricky too, and there are scripture passages that we would have to nuance that.

Hold that one as kind of tentative, but for sure, only the Holy Spirit proceeds.

So those are the exceptions to the doctrine of appropriation.

Those are the personal properties that apply each to only one person of the Trinity.

Now, finally, for students, as you think to write your essay on the doctrine of the Trinity, remember a couple of things.

You are writing this as though you're teaching it to beginners.

So you need to define your terms and you need to be clear and connect all the dots for them.

You may use analogies.

I encourage you to use analogies and check out the last section of Trinity 101 about analogies for the Trinity.

There are different kinds of analogies.

For example, if you read that book, The Shack, that is a social analogy for the Trinity.

not a very good one in my opinion.

I don't really recommend the book at all as an analogy for the Trinity, but you can use analogies to teach the Trinity.

Just remember that when you say that the Trinity is like XYZ, you also have to say the Trinity is not like this analogy for these reasons, because teaching the Trinity is not in the analogy per se.

Teaching the Trinity is in your explanation of the analogy and why it works and why it doesn't work.

Because you're actually going to teach more about the Trinity through the via negativa, the apophatic way.

In other words, to say you're going to teach more about the Trinity when you tell them why the analogy doesn't work as an analogy for the Trinity, why the analogy is a bad analogy for the Trinity.

That's when you're really going to start to teach them something about the Trinity.

Pay attention to the outline that I gave you in the course pack and remember that you are teaching this material to beginners, not children though.

Don't try to teach the Trinity to children.

Anyone under about age 12 or 13 cannot do the kind of abstract reasoning that it takes.

And especially if you use an analogy, they're only going to take it literally and you're only going to confuse them.

So you are not teaching the Trinity to children.

But to adult learners who are beginners and who haven't read the textbook and find your voice, claim your authority as the teacher and approach the essay from that standpoint.

All right.

That's all I have for now.

Thanks for watching to the end and I will see you in class.

Hey, thanks for watching this video all the way to the end.

I really appreciate that.

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I hope to see you there.

And I'll see you there.