The Gospel of John

The Undivided Trinity

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 53- 70

Genre:

Track: 053

Dictation Name: RR197AD55

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord oh ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name, bring an offering and come into His courts. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before Him all the earth. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all honor and glory belongeth we come into Thy presence mindful of how rich we are in Jesus Christ. Teach us so to walk that we look not at the world and the problems it presents us but to Christ and the victory that is ours in Him. Give us grace by day to live in the blessed assurance that because Christ is our savior we need not fear what man may do, what the world may plan and what those around us and far from us may conspire to do against Thee, Thy kingdom and Thy people. Strengthen us in our service, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is John 16: 12-15. Our subject: The Undivided Trinity. John 16: 12-15.

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

15 All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”

As we have seen, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit appears in its fullness in the gospel of John. The notion that the [unknown] controversy, that is, the controversy over the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son first introduced the idea of the procession of the Spirit from the son as well as the Father is nonsense. Many, many of the doctrines that the theologians and the first three, four centuries formulated were simply formulated out of Scripture. So that the Nicene Creed and the other creeds simply represent the church catching up with the Bible. It takes much time for the church to catch up with the bible if it ever can. There’s much that we have not yet fully understood in scripture and the reason is that we are not born with all wisdom. And it takes the hard experiences of life to bring home some of the doctrines. It is also false as we saw last Sunday to separate the Spirit from the doctrine of judgment. Just as the idea of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, is a myth, so too is the concept of the Holy Spirit as one concerned with loving and ecstatic manifestations only wrong. We have had too much sentimentality in this century in particular but it has been a while in developing with regard to Christ and the Spirit. In verses eleven through fifteen our Lord speaks again of the spirit as He did in verses two through eleven. Bernard and McNeal said of verse eleven:

“There is nothing arbitrary in the divine judgment, it is the inevitable result of moral laws. Good is not the same as evil and the sharpness of the distinction is revealed by the Spirit in His assurance of crisis, that is, separation or judgment. We will convince the world, He will convince the world at once of the justice and righteousness of God’s judgments.” Unquote.

The Holy Spirit is the comforter but He is much more. The tendency to reduce Him to the level of a comforter falsifies the doctrine because it neglects His part in judgment. In Ephesians 4:30 we are told:

“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”

Now some take grieve in the sense of bringing sadness to the Holy Spirit, the word translated so means to burden or to bring heaviness. In Ephesians 4:20-29 we are told to abandon the course of life which marked us in Adam and to become a new man clothed in Christ’s new humanity. Instead of exploiting one another we are members one of another. To do otherwise is disruptive of the new humanity of which we are members and of the Holy Spirit our strengthener and our advocate. How could He be the advocate of sin? Rather He becomes our reprove and chastiser. But there have been no lack of heresies about the Holy Spirit. I almost hesitate to mention one that in some circles has been and still is popular. This heresy sees the Holy Spirit as the feminine aspect of the Trinity so that some have spoken in the past and even in our time of the Father, and the Mother Spirit and the Son and they use feminine in the sense of tender, soft and weepy. It is difficult to have anything but disgust for those who hold such an opinion because it is disrespectful of both the Holy Spirit and of women. In verse twelve our Lord says:

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”

This is a text of very real importance in telling us about God’s mercy.

Paul tells us much the same in First Corinthians 10:13.

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

In other words, God limits the amount we undergo in the way of trials and suffering. In a fallen world trials and temptations are routine but where our faith is concerned God does not allow us to be overwhelmed. As a result our Lord waited until the time between the resurrection and the ascension to tell them more about these events and their meaning. Then in verse thirteen he says:

“13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.”

This verse is also very important to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit because our Lord says emphatically He shall not speak of Himself. Some like the medieval [unknown] and their modern followers which are many have seen their third age as the age of the Spirit and love. For them the first age was of the Father and law, the second age of the Son and grace and the third of the Spirit and love. Three essentially different religions. Such people believe that when the age of the Spirit dawns which is supposedly happening now we won’t need grace and we won’t need Jesus, we will have the Spirit and love just as they have held that because we have been in the age of the Son and of grace we don’t need the Father and law. Now, this idea uses biblical materials for anti-biblical conclusions. We do not have three different Gods but one God in three persons.

The relative ignorance of the Spirit from scripture is in part God intended, we cannot replace the Son who redeems us in His centrality. Now Jesus Christ in John 14:6 is identified as the truth. Here in this passage the spirit is described as the Spirit of truth. Then in First Timothy 3:16 we are told that God the Father is the pillar and ground of truth. We cannot separate the Godhead into three gods or make any attribute the exclusive attribute of any of the three persons. The Holy Spirit is truth our Lord tells us, will guide us into all truth or more literally into all the truth. The guiding is not simply intellectual although it is that. We are led, we are tested, we are tried, we are taught in many ways the truth. The Spirit does not give us a truth that is exclusive to Himself, He does not speak for Himself but for the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. He speaks our Lord tells us what He hears, He speaks for the triune God. Our Lord then goes on to say:

“He will shew you things to come.”

This does not mean specific events but rather the direction and the goal of all events, namely the triumph of the kingdom of God. Our Lord then says:

“14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”

The trinity’s three persons are one in being without any subordination of essence but there is a subordination of tasks, another one does one thing, the other another but in total unity.

The Father’s place and function precedes the Son and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son but they are equal in being and nature. Now this sounds rather abstract but so many of the heresies over the centuries have come when people have failed to see the unity of the Trinity. The work of the Spirit is Christ centered, our Lord says ye shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. It is not to go a step beyond Jesus Christ but the work of the Spirit centers on Christ. So the triune God is telling us over and over again look at Jesus. He is the author and finisher of your salvation and you are to follow Him, to believe on Him for if you believe on Him you will believe in the Father and in the Spirit. So again and again we are told we must concentrate on Jesus Christ. In verse fifteen our Lord says all things that the Father hath are mine, therefore said I that he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you. In John 17:10 our Lord says:

“10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”

There is a full and perfect communion between the Father and the Son and therefore the Spirit. Truth is one, the trinity is one, so that the Father, the Son and the Spirit have one being and one purpose, there is no division in the Godhead. Our text, the verses preceding and following it, very plainly set forth the doctrine of the Trinity. The church did not invent it as modernists assume but simply grew to understand and defend it. But the modernists when told this insist on seeing John as the one who invented this doctrine among others. If told that Paul held the same doctrine they insist on seeing Paul as an inventor like John, so on and on, nothing can please them.

Like Caiaphas they will not believe. Again we have another problem in the sentimentalizing of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. But it is clear that He is very much the judge as is the Father and the Son. What we have in many doctrines of the Holy Spirit is a [unknown] type of adaptation. The three ages idea is Hellenic and evolutionary. Supposedly a progression takes place, an evolutionary development from the Father through the Son to the Spirit. Such thinking is biblically illiterate, its approach to the Bible is a smorgasbord one with the freedom to pick and choose and build thereby a religion acceptable to the modern mind. Acceptable it may be but not true. The Godhead is one and undivided in its being and united in its works of creation and redemption. Heresies have always started with false ideas about the Trinity or with the notion that that’s abstract theology, which it isn’t, and therefore the ordinary believer need not believe in the one undivided trinity, all three persons equally God, equally ultimate. It is difficult to think of a single heresy in the many, many heresies that have abounded over the centuries that has not begun with a false doctrine of the Trinity. And one of our problems in this century is that in too many seminaries now systematic theology is no longer taught and too many people go out to preach who think that talk of the Trinity is abstract and we must be down to earth and practical in all that we preach and teach. And so we have a problem today, ignorance on this basic doctrine. One of the things of interest here is that there used to be a sizable section in the older hymnals singing the glory of the Trinity and the meaning of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Little by little those hymns have disappeared. Some years ago I did mention a funeral I had years and years ago. It was of a man in his early forties, very seriously mentally retarded. But none of the neighbors knew about it till they were told, the mother who became a widow shortly after their only son was born spent the forty some years in the home caring for her son, taking him for a walk daily. And little by little she trained him so he learned to take care of himself properly, to eat like a gentleman, to dress, to go for walks with his mother daily and to greet each of the neighbors, but they spent as part of her teaching a fair amount of time at the piano every day. She had a hymnal that was before this century and she loved to take him to the piano to play it and the two together would sing. And many of the hymns that she stressed were hymns to the trinity. I can still hear her singing and playing to Holy Ghost be praises, to Father and to Son. Her life was an easy one she told me because through those hymns she was very close always to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for the revelation of Thyself through Thy son Jesus Christ, through Thy word and through Thy providential care and blessings unto us. Our Father we come to Thee mindful of how rich we are in Christ. Teach us to look not at our problems and distresses but upon Thee and Thy mercy, grace and blessings unto us. Our God we thank Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] It’s because they’ve begun very often with, if not a false, a warped doctrine of the Trinity. And they as a result cannot have a faithful perspective of the Godhead. I would not say all of them do but some definitely do and I know one tried to tell me once that I might have a correct knowledge of the Bible and of the Father and of the Son but I didn’t know the Holy Spirit unless I would join them in their thinking. Well, it is impossible to know the Father without knowing the Son and the Spirit for the Three are one and it’s wrongly dividing the word of truth to try to separate the trinity. And the heresies that have risen as I indicated are very, very extensive and they’ve all proven to be deadly.

Any other questions or comments?

One of the things we need to recognize is we live in a century which has been especially prone not only to neglecting the doctrine of the Trinity but separating the doctrine into various parts and dividing the Three persons of the Trinity. And this has meant a very, very difficult problem for the average believer because he’s not taught properly. The works of this of course go back so time, antinomianism, a disrespect for the Old Testament and a number of other ideas began very shortly after the enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these things were developing and now we have the fruition. Well, let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for one another and for Thy providential care. We thank Thee that Thou hast in Thy wisdom brought us to Jesus Christ and to one another. Encourage us and make us an encouragement one to another that we may serve Thee with all our heart, mind and being. Take our eyes off those things which are disheartening and troublesome, give us grace to overcome and make us strong in Thee and in Thy word. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.