and I'm asking that about church history and I'm asking that of you who is the father to you who do you think the father is so let's have a word of prayer and then let's uh dive into the lecture dear Lord we thank you for all of your gifts uh we thank you Father uh for the gift of your son who became a human being to die on the cross for our sins and to rise from the dead and who ascended to your right hand so that we may enter your presence we thank you for the Holy Spirit father the one that you and the son send in order uh to convict us of sin and of judgment and of the righteousness that is available through the son Jesus Christ so father we want to bless you you are the blessed one and we want to praise you as the blessed one who blesses us with all things especially with the vision of yourself and your son and your Holy Spirit we pray in the name of your son amen so who is the uh father to you in the last lecture we learned how scripture describes God as the father and so I want to build on that uh that research that we've already done into what scripture tells us uh about about God as the father we also uh discovered that God is Father uniquely by generation to his only son or begetting his son therefore he is father he is also fatherly through creation and Providence toward his creatures especially human beings and we also discovered he is father in a special Redemptive way to those who believe in his son in this lecture we must consider how he has been understood as God the father in the history of the church from the earliest period to today and then we need to begin to draw our own conclusions about who God is as father now first we need to review the reception of the truth about the father in the history of the church uh generally and second we need to survey some recent and often contentious debates over the fatherhood of God and third we consider how God the father's being uh ought to be understood so we'll have some systematic conclusions uh on the being of the father and then finally we must learn to confess God properly so who is the father uh to you uh the question driving this discussion can be stated that personally who is the father to you so I believe that we receive God's word and then we have to interpret it correctly under the leadership of the Holy Spirit of course we are not the only ones or I'm not the only one that has had the holy spirit to guide me in my interpretation of scripture neither are you neither are we here today so we must uh hear what the spirit says to the churches throughout history and I think that's the safer way to get it the uh proper interpretation of these scriptures about the father that we uh reviewed this last week so let's look at the father in Christian history and we're going to spend a good deal of time on the early church and we'll actually start with a bit of heresy it always starts that way uh 1 Corinthians 113 I think it is it is necessary uh that there be heresies among you so that you know who the approved teachers are heresy has a uh an enlightening function by how dark it is in comparison to the light and this is part of the Divine will so Christian reflection upon the truth about God the Father developed through the centuries from being primarily concerned with his nature to concern with his work and you can see this and I I'll show this to you at first very concerned with who he is as father to more concerned today of what is the father doing so there's a been a a shift in that regard the early church explored how we should think of the father's ontology while the church in recent centuries has focused on the father's economy so with this shift in emphasis the gains previously made in the theological exegesis of scripture were muted I would argue by liberal denials that we can even know God the father and by arguments over the gender of God the church has long had to fight against heresy and error against the father well the first thing that we need to look at is the heresy of aryanism the heresy of aryanism the greatest heresy in Christian history was formalized by Aras he was a popular priest Eon 4th Century Alexandria now this heresay Arch I I use that term on purpose thank you for reminding me not to trip so I refer to Aras as a heresy Arc he is a leading heretic it's not just that he's your run-of-the-mill heretic he he's like the heretic of all Heretics okay and so I use that term on purpose what's interesting about Aras is that he set out to exalt God the Father well we all want to do that don't we but and this is the problem he set out to exalt God the father but at the atrocious price of diminishing the son so how do I exalt the father well I'm gonna put down the son that's not how you exalt God the Father uh but that's what he set out to do now Aras was trained in what in philosophy and in his day the dominant philosophy was middle platonism middle platonism and this uh worldview portrayed God as an absolute distant monad mediated by a secondary Divinity who was so to speak the Divine mind in action now you can hear some things that do sound a little bit like Christianity don't they God mediation by the Divine mind mind being logos right so it sounds right but that's kind of where it ends Aras similarly portrayed the father as absolute and distant so he wanted God to be absolute and distant through subordinating the Son and the Holy Spirit aras's description of the father as the superior so that's this is what he calls the father and I think I have a a slide there he described him as the Superior in his popular extended hymn the theia which means uh the B quet and in that he contrived oh look at that we've got rain praise the Lord uh he contrived a hierarchical trinity now in that you should say boo okay so yeah say woe to the rain thank the Lord for the rain but a hierarchical trinity is what he created his earlier writings Describe the Father as and I give this to you one God alone ingenerate alone and and that's you know to say one God could you agree with that statement absolutely there is one God but then he says alone in generate what does that mean unbegotten so he is the god is alone unbegotten and Christians believe that the son is God and that he is begotten so that's where the trouble begins in that definition alone ingenerate or unbegotten yes sir so in AR's world then what happens to folks like you and I acceped Christ because according to his world only the father has immortality so well yeah I think what he means by that is alone possessing by Nature I don't think he's necessarily saying you can't get to Eternity he's saying that the father has it the son does not except by grace and that's really the the in in some ways you could describe what's going on with Aras as a nature versus Grace distinction applied in the wrong way so the nature of God belongs as you see he's saying to the father right and then he's going to argue that the son is God or Divine in ways by Grace not by nature and he's going to be very emphatic about that not by Nature so um and then to go on he says alone Everlasting alone unbegun and this is about the father alone true I what do you do with statements by Jesus like you know I am the way the truth you say ' no no no father alone is true alone having immortality alone wise what do you do with Paul's statement that Christ is the wisdom of God I mean there there's some immediate scriptural issues that ought to be stirring in your head alone good alone Sovereign oh there you know the only Authority despite being corrected by his Bishop uh whose name was Alexander of Alexandria that's an easy name to remember right Alexander of Alexandria despite being corrected by his Bishop Aras codified his view of the father's superiority and the son's inferiority his basic Innovation was to impose a strict hierarchy upon God's identity denying the father and the son were equal so that's what he's getting at the father and the son are not equal that's his basic claim Aras divided the father from the Son by repeatedly subordinating the Son and the spirit most famously he claimed the son's nature was different from the father's nature because of his Generation by the father he presumed that generation and creation were identical so to beget a son in other words God created a son so he sees the act of generation and Act of Creation now I don't know from his writings we only have fragments of his writings I don't know if he would say the same about human beings but it would be like similar to him saying you know you as a father or mother you created that child which makes you a Creator right and not a generator so that child is not like you it doesn't have your nature and then the question becomes well is that child even human and that's that's the kind of logic that is going on here so he's um he's equating generation and creation Aras used in order to uh State this he he used a significant Greek philosophical term homo Usos so he introduces this term it had been it appeared before with a another heretic called Paul of samosata that's a different story and we really don't know much about Paul of Samos what we do know is that Aras takes this term and he says listen the son is not of the same nature and that's what homo Usos means same nature and Aras says the son is not of the same nature so he comes out with a denial that the Son and the father are of the same nature among Aryans the father's nature was also deemed to be unbegotten or ingenerate right while the son's nature was deemed begotten so that's what there that's what he's saying he's saying listen the father is unbegotten the son is begotten the father's nature is be unbegotten the son's nature is begotten two different Natures aras's redefinition of generation as requiring a separate ontology what did that do to the sun it diminished the sun his Innovation could not remain unanswered and that brings us to aanus now Alexander of Alexandria was the bishop of Alex Alex Alexandria was in is in North Africa it's still an active city um it was the Bread Basket of the Roman Empire uh so the the Nile River uh through its various floodings could generate a lot of Wheat and so it was a very rich area and the uh the bishop of Alexandria was a very powerful figure within Christianity in the Mediterranean uh and by the way Christianity was not confined to the Mediterranean as a lot of older Christian histories point out there there's a lot of Christianity in Africa and further into Asia than we often have in our older history uh textbooks as a matter of fact the center of Christianity was probably more in modern Iraq than it was in Rome which is where it we in the west sometimes think that everything's centered around Rome well it's not it's actually even further east than Jerusalem uh but that's a different story Alexandria and Alexander of Alexandria uh tries to discipline him he refuses so a council is called you remember in 325 uh Constantine calls a council to try to take and uh bring the church out of the grip of this controversy over the teaching of Aras later a the becomes the champion of uh Orthodoxy and he also becomes the bishop of Alexandria after Alexander passes away so let's talk about aanus aanus is the great contemporary champion of Christian Orthodoxy he counted that generation and creation were two different movements so it's not creation equal generation but creation versus generation first God the the father beget his son eternally second the father and the son created the world giving a temporal course now I want you to see something here uh there's a very similar movement in Hebrews uh chapter 1 and and we'll need to keep this text in mind because I think it's one of the uh best texts for understanding the generation of the Sun so go to Hebrews chapter 1 and after the prologue in which the superiority of the son as being the perfect image of the father is spelled out and I think you could get to ning Christianity easily through verses 1-4 let's read those but then let's look at generation after that long ago God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways in these last days he has spoken to us by his son God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him uhoh we're talking about somebody who is not through him heir of all things the sun is the radiance of God's glory Radiance light God's glory another reference to light so it's like saying he is the sun is the light of the light he is the radiance of God's glory in the exact expression of his nature the word nature in the Greek there uh could also be translated as person it's actually hupostasis so the he's the exact expression or the perfect image of his nature sustaining All Things by his powerful word so the word of the word if you will sustains all things he creates all things are created for him he sustains all things right yes this is this this is language that is already elevating the son far above creation into equality with the father after making purification for sins so he also did that and uh chapter two will make much of how the sun made purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high so he became superior to the angels just as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs so the name right but then look at the discussion about generation in verses 5 and six or to which of the Angels did he ever say you're my son today I have become your father or again I will be his father and he will be my son again when he brings the his firstborn into the world he says and let all God's angels worship him I want you to talk uh stop and I want you to look and put these verses which are quotations of the Old Testament into their context in the book of Hebrews he's already exalted the son to equality with the father and then he says this to which of the Angels did he ever say you are my son today I have become your father or begotten you now some people are going to get hung up on today mind you with God a day is as a thousand years a thousand years as a day moreover if God created All Things by his son that means time itself which is a creature time itself has been created by so don't when when it says today don't assume that you can take and reduce God to the language of time and creation that language must be purified and transcended above what the language itself is saying and you can tell this because he says I have become your father or again I will be his father and he will be my son and even if you don't like the language of begotten how does a father have a son he begats so even if you don't like that language and I and and Scholars who have rejected the language have come back to affirm the language uh because they realize they they made a mistake I one time did some research to find out where some of the modern New Testament Scholars why they rejected the idea that scripture was teaching the generation of the Sun or the beginning of the Sun and discovered that all of them went back to an essay that had been published in about 1958 or so uh that was written uh by Dell Moody a liberal uh systematic Theologian at Southern Seminary in Louisville Kentucky and Moody was summarizing one of his PhD students dissertations and nobody ever goes back and reads the dissertation they only cite the article and then that article has become gospel for saying well you don't you can't believe in gener they affected how it even affects many of your um what what translation do you have open there uh excuse me what what translation do you all right what look at he what is look at John 1 um 18 and tell me what read that verse to me no one has seen God at any time the only begotten God who all right that's a good one I need a bad translation that's a good translation what anybody have something other than me anybody have the csb pull up right yeah or or the ESV you can you pull up this 18 God the only God who is in The Father's Side he has made his okay what what what translation is that ESV ESV and what do you have no no one has ever seen God the only the one and only son who is she notice how they skip uh in many of the modern translations they will skip begotten and and um and substitute one and only or something along those lines and it comes out of the whole field of New Testament studies having surrendered the definition of g to a modern article that really wasn't well based in scholarship yes sir I am sorry so do you think we should those translations then oh well you know oh you you yeah you know I any translation is an interpretation okay and um when I wrote this book and uh this other book here we have to use the csb as our basic translation but I will often substitute and then I'll use like the na ASB and say I I think this is actually a better translation um I remember whenever the csb which used to be called the hcsb came out uh there there was some disgruntlement over this issue but the people that were making it uh often seemed to sound like kjb only and so they did not get much credibility but I think they actually had a point and my hope is is that the modern will go back and correct this issue few years ago in 2016 uh there had been such an uproar over denial of an eternal Generation by some pretty wellknown Scholars who I'll mention later that they uh uh that they were out of line with the nyine Creed and so they went and studies and determined oh we were wrong and then they adop generation again they still have yes I remember I don't know if this was like 10 years ago I read an article around like John 3:16 and saying like the only begotten was actually only unique is that the well that's that's what's going on with the one and only and only unique and and they are relying on Old scholarship that has now been disproved so yeah that's what you're that's what you saw okay what come back to that yes did you have a question so kind of the discussion we're having is like how much our translations are shaping our theology exactly is that being corrected like are we still like 5 to 10 years from it being being corrected is yeah you know you you cited the nasb I helped to uh edit the new nasb so it's like the the new New American Standard well 2020 right yeah 2020 and uh I worked on Revelation uh in Hebrews um and they chose to go with the one and only or unique son idea rather than only begotten I wish they hadn't because I think they were right in the older nasb to keep it I think it's going to take some time to get back there I really do I also think it's a reminder that translations are interpretations so the trans itself is not perfect and that means you've got to do your own work in the original languages that's why we want you to take Greek and Hebrew uh because we we need to make sure that we do this work well and you also need to understand historical theology but let's go back to Hebrews 1: 15 so if you've got God the Father beting his son eternally because the son is creating all things which includes time then in verse six it says again when he brings his hold on a second what does that mean why you know is he begotten today which to God means forever is he begotten and then begotten absolutely he's begotten and then he comes into the world does that make sense so you cannot confuse the beting the Eternal beting of the sun with the human generation of the Sun and we'll come back to this but notice you if you're going to read the book of Hebrews in context rather than taking verses out of context then what you have is a sense of movement here that it refers to the sun in Eternal terms and then in temporal terms he is the Son of God who then enters into the world does that make sense and then he says and let all G God's angels worship Him Now who are you supposed to worship god let's go back to the Ten Commandments right and yet the father is saying you worship the son I mean you've got here an equality of deity that is already baked into the text and one of the key ideas is the generation of the sun okay so I'm done preaching in other words I I I agree with Athan so first God the Father beget his son eternally second the father and the son created the world giving it a temporal course and that's Aon of argument and athanasius I think is the better exec of scripture uh one statement here that I just want to throw out to you to think about Aras would have agreed with our common claim today that scripture is without air inherency is a true Doctrine about scripture inherency is not enough you can affirm inherency and end up a heretic just remember that it's not just that you say oh I believe in scripture you can pound on the desk all day long and say you believe in an erent word but do you believe in the Eternal Word that becomes an issue yes sir Joseph Smith essentially an AR like with what Joseph Smith was more of a polygamist and a polytheist uh you're thinking of Jehovah's Witnesses oh they're definitely Aran absolutely and they'll admit it but they you know they'll Hammer you know we believe the Bible they just don't agree with John 1 so they've tried to reinterpret it in the New World Translation but that's a different issue okay let's go back athanasius placed the sun on the Divine side of the Stark divide between Creator and creation through recalling scriptures description of generation to him that is to the son when a human is begotten which is also known as generation he receives the fullness of human nature similarly God shares all that he is nature with the sun and you can read about that uh aanus has multiple books exactly what he's doing against the AR so he's writing against book against or book against Heretics you know so why are they writing trying to protect their this is pastors do uh they protect their flocks from false uh teaching and uh if you will read athanasius's works you'll discover that he is a very good exog of scripture and Aras is a very bad exeet of scripture but they both believe that scripture is True Perfection a the father's beginning of the son must not be circumscribed or reduced by crude reference that's the Lord saying you better listen to him repat that due to God's Perfection athanasius argued the father's beginning of the son must not be circumscribed or reduced by crude reference to creaturely generation what do I mean by that when you and I hear that terminology of generation or begetting and we begin to think about what that means we're all of the sudden thinking of the human body human bodies and then all of a sudden it begins to get crude and that's that's what happens when you don't read scripture according to God's Perfection Divine fatherhood must be considered according to Divine Perfection God the Father beget eternally God the son in the Perfection of one divine nature moreover God's perfect fatherhood is forever the standard of limited creaturely fatherhood not vice versa human fatherhood is measured by God for of him is every father Heaven Earth named I think that's important uh so in this book um which I contributed a couple of chapters to a couple years ago called trinitarian theology the theological models and doctrinal application it was edited by uh professor friend of mine at South Eastern Seminary Keith Whitfield and contributors included uh all Southern Baptists but Matthew Emerson uh of Oklahoma Baptist University Luke stamps of and I'm all of a sudden forgetting where Luke teaches um and then Bruce SAR of Southern Seminary and me and we all had a discussion on these matters the point of my essay was you don't take human paradigms and impose them upon God you take divine revelation and you understand what we are made in the image of God we cannot ought not should not unless we're engaged in an act of idolatry make God in our image and that is a real important issue to me and so aanus saying these things things I understand what in other words for of him that is the the fatherhood of God is every fatherhood in Heaven and Earth named many of us by the way have uh fathers who haven't been the best fathers and if we understood God the Father by human fathers we might not have a positive view of God the Father Paul Vitz a Catholic scholar several years ago went back and examined in uh the rise of modern atheism uh with people like Carl Marx and uh nii and so on and discovered that each of them had one thing in common they all had a horrible relationship with their father and it's natural for us to look at God in the terms of the father we know and what athenus is saying is don't do that you let Divine fatherhood Define fatherhood is and then you have to elevate human fatherhood to that Divine fatherhood does that make sense and that could be hard to do because our fathers have such an incredible impact Upon Our psyche in ways that we don't even understand and it may affect even how we look at God refusing correction now you know you know what a heretic is it's not someone who makes a mistake in their teaching it's it's someone who makes a mistake in their teaching and refuses to correct it I have I have run into this periodically uh I'll have pastors that are teaching one thing about the being of Christ and they'll hear me and they'll be like man I got to change and they do and they get it the way it should be and that is to exalt the son and not diminish the sun others I've had the reaction of what are you out there hunting Heretics I'm like no I'm hunting heresy but if you want to be a heretic then you agree with the heresy no the you you've got to take and if you're wrong in a teaching you change there is no perfect preacher in existence except for Christ and so as you come to know you know who uh who was it that Priscilla and Aquilla uh went and corrected remember his name yeah apollis and what he he was corrected and yet he was a very popular preacher and apollis had the wisdom to be corrected in his preaching about Christ and he was corrected by a woman go figure that all right I better leave that alone while refusing correction Aras continued to diminish the by ascribing to his pre-existent person creaturely limitations he looked at the Sun and he kept ascribing limits to the sun he certainly elevated the sun above creation and he allowed the son the name of God you could call him God but with equivocation he's God but not the about Aras that he's willing to say one thing while meaning another right so don't trust a teacher who's willing to lie to your face because he's probably lying behind your back too the heresy Arc thoroughly subordinated the son to the father for instance he infused eternity with temporal qualities arguing God was not eternally a father and the exist Aries also ascribed change to the Divine son he went on to a different sort degree and Authority between the father and the son as well as to ascribe to the Trinity differences in glory subsistence existence will wisdom and understanding anytime he had something to say about the father he said the Father the Son the Father the Son the Father the Son so he's subordinating the the son repeatedly and one of the things he does and you see it there he actually gives the father and the son different Wills we'll come back to that and I'm talking about the Eternal son in summary Aras tried to elevate God the Father by diminishing the son however subordinating the son necessarily diminishes the father remember isn't the father Eternal Yes except Aras concludes no well then what all the language of him being Eternal he's just contradicting himself and doesn't even understand that's what he's doing because if the son is not Eternal guess what the father's not Eternal and if you say well the son the father became or God became the father then you're saying that God is mutable changeable and you're back to the same problem Jesus taught the apostles that Humanity cannot honor the father by dishonoring the son read about this in uh John chapter 8: 48 through 59 the father honors the son because the son possesses the name and identity of the great I am that's why they wanted to put him to death before Abraham was I am right he was claiming the name of God who are you to do that and and and that's I hope that went well um and that's that's the difficulty he's got throughout subsequent Christian history the influence of aryanism has persisted Aryans and semiarians this is a term you'll see thrown out there Aryans and semiarians I I was talking to a couple of other Scholars who have pointed to the problem of semi arianism uh brg Carter a a Canadian Evangelical and JV fesco uh who's a presbyterian uh scholar uh a Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson Tennessee uh they have used semi Aran to describe some of the Evangelical teachers today and I I challenge and and Matthew Barrett a friend and a colleague at Midwestern seminary in their use of semi arean I said listen is semi arianism even a correct category um and finally at the end of it they had to agree with me no it's actually just a nice way to say ARA because if you diminish the sun in any way anyway that's an Aryan move so you can't say well I'll diminish him in all these ways but not this way it's still aryanism because you've diminished the sun we don't don't do that every knee is going to have to bow and every tongue is going to have to confess what Jesus is Lord and Lord without a qualification Lord means god it also means Master means all authority and that that is the ultimate issue before us today we'll come back to that so arens and arens continued to diminish Christ in various ways down to this day and you have them throughout Christian history the Aryan heresy brought division to the early church and the Council of NAA gathered to correct Aras in 3:25 however its mythology of hierarchy continued to attract those seeking power over others including several Emperors and their clerical ideologues uh a couple of says in uh church history Journal back about 1955 pointed out that uh for the reason aryanism had such traction for so long is because what they did is they created a sense of uh hierarchy in God them to have a a hierarchy in humanity right so if the father is over the son the son is over the emperor is over you and if you disagree with the emperor you disagree with God how dare you a lot of Power claims here aren't there it's also hierarchy it's also incredibly sacrilegious I think when you do this kind of thing you use the name of God in vain that is for your vain purposes rather than for God's purposes all right that's heresy I'm going to erase that okay okay during the middle Decades of the 4th Century various groups sought ways to make Aryan ideas acceptable even while denying they were Aryan what's interesting is most Aryans deny they're Aryan why because they know it's bad to be Aryan but they want to be Aryan so you just deny your ARA uh you have this with the so-called Hons the anoman uh and there's all sorts of groups and all of them what they basically did was take out the nyine claim about the homo usio between the father and the son that the father and the son were of the same substance some said said that the father was like the son or the father and the son were of like nature some even said the father and the son were unlike in each case they're they're saying oh I'm not Aryan but they are all diminishing the sun especially with regard to his nature uh but this had traction for a while because several Emperors wanted to keep that hierarchy there that Justified their Authority so yes when you also denigrate your salvation youate his word brilliant absolutely right because if if if the son is denigrated in nature how are you saved how are you United with God if the son is not God and man because you cannot be saved apart from the son being God and man absolutely and moreover You could argue and it has been argued that when you when you make God the son something other than the sun is that means rather than him earning your salvation you have to earn it so aryanism ultimately leads you to some type of pelagianism or works-based salvation brilliant question so these Aryans and semiarians after NAA orally affirmed NAA but continued to reduce the Sun by altering Na's Central claim for the sun's substantial Unity with the Father the nyine Creed reached a more settled form at the Council of Constantinople in 381 and This brilliant dogmatic statement uh summarized the Orthodox father's careful reading of scripture now I want you to notice this the Ning Creed you can take every Clause of it and ground it in scripture except for one word although I think there are near terms and the reason it was chosen isos said that he is a substance and what's interesting is that repeatedly after that uh people were trying to do away with that term which correctly summarizes the teaching of scripture while Orthodox exog Jesus was refined in response to Heretics like Aras of Alexandria and marelis of ankyra leaders like athanasius were demonstrating the deity of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit through biblical interpretation both before and after the rise of the Aran heresy the theological inter interpretations of scripture of the later fourth Century capid Doan fathers who included bosil of cesaria Gregor of naanis and Gregory of Nissa subsequently solidified trinitarian Orthodoxy they defended the nyine Creed honor father by honoring his only begotten son in primarily scriptural terms the Ning Creed in many ways is just a repetition of scripture and it is a good summary of the heart of scripture well let's get into the Christian Creeds the classical Creeds of the ancient Church such as the nyine Creed the Apostles Creed and the athonian Creed Drew upon scripture to confess the father they emphasize the father's being and his work first they affirm the father is the one God they also taught directly or by implication his Unity with the Son and the spirit even as he remains distinct by his generation of the son and procession of the spirit they also described his Perfection of power and his work as Creator the Apostles Creed and I've got it here for you Begins the first of its three articles with the confession I believe in God the father that's how you started in Christian confession in the classic era I believe in God the Father omnipotent creator of Heaven and Earth or Almighty the Ning Creed uh provided a further statement taking into account his creation of the spiritual and the physical we believe in one God the Father ruler of all maker of heaven and Earth of all that is seen and unseen Gregory of naanis another name like aanus very important in the fight against heresy and for the true Christ and uh the capian fathers by the way were all uh from an area of what we know as modern turkey he was one of them he led the council which solemnized the nying Creed his theological orations describe further the person of the father he says the name father identifies him as the source of the Eternal Divine relations we'll come back to that he says the father designates neither the substance nor the activity but the relationship the manner of being which holds Good between the father and the son against Heretics who could Define the being of God as unbegotten Gregory said we cannot know what God is in his nature and Essence we can simply know that God is Gregory affirmed the father's Eternal generation of the son without presuming to Define generation God's begetting ought to have the tribute of our reverent silence he said the important point is for you to learn that the son has been begotten so we know that God is we don't know what God is we know that God beget the son we don't know what begetting really means we have a word that must be cleansed of its crude anthropological associations and lifted above disagree here take a step out disagree here I don't think they're crude anthological Association I think that the boundaries impressed Upon Us by God the father and the Trinity is there to remind us of our place how much we're not God that's what I said okay maybe I'm just done no no no no you're not DB but that's what I was saying by saying crude I meant bodily so you know God is everywhere or everywhere is in God right because God is spirit and all things that have come into being have come into being by God in him we live and move and have our being so when we think of time and space with regard to God God we have to recognize that God is not bound by time and space and to be crude that language I'm using there is to try to bind God by creaturely bodiliness that's what I'm trying to avoid question follow up to that yeah when you say crud do you mean in the rudimentary sense or in the sort of sensual uh s yeah both yes but yeah I mean especially in our hypersexualized society but and not just ours I mean they were facing the same issues some in many ways ancient Rome and modern Europe and America were both pornographic societies so they had to deal with this too summarizing the Orthodoxy developed in the west by Augustine of Hippo and if you can bring up the slide for this the athonian Creed of the early 6th Century confess the father is one person who is equal in glory and co-eternal in Majesty with the Son and the spirit the one father moreover is uncreated infinite Eternal and omnipotent with the Son and the spirit while he shares deity simply in entirely with the Son and the spirit the father remains distinct in person drawing directly upon on the language of the New Testament regarding the Eternal relations this Creed affirms the son is begotten of the father while the spirit is proceeding the father is neither made nor created nor begotten among the ancient formula the athonian Creed provides the strongest defense against heresy and is commended to the reader uh if you read the affan Creed it actually says that if you deny what the Creed is saying you're not saved and so when you read that you have to be careful you know do I really agree with this do I really believe this but I would commend to you that the athonian Creed is true and so these are some of the things it says about the father well let's get into medieval Orthodoxy and Reformation Orthodoxy prior to the severe diminishing of theological Orthodoxy during and after the enlightenment the classic credal statements of the great tradition held sway well I tell you what we are at 7:30 I have had so much fun the time has gotten away with us so let's take a h 15minute break shall we say or and uh then we'll come back together and uh continue with the medieval period then we'll get into the modern debates and then we'll try to make sense out of all if we can