Giggling about losing our virginity, ruining lives, and overcoming fears

Subscribe to the Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our free introduction to Spiritual Gifts eBook. Plus, get access to discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses, and conferences, and more. Subscribe now at theremnantradio.com. Everybody, welcome to the Wonderful World of Remnant Radio. In today's program, I've got Dr. Malcolm Yarnell, and we're going to be discussing Christology, the Trinity, all that fun stuff and more. You guys see Tina's going to be a fun program. Welcome back to the Wonderful World of Remnant Radio. My name is Joshua Lewis. I am one of the hosts here at Remnant Radio. We've got an exciting program for you today, but before we dive into the subject matter, I want to remind you, all things Remnant Radio can be found in the link of this description over at TheRumnantRadio.com. If you sign up for the newsletter, you get discounts to conferences, courses, updates on all the Patreon content that you get access to when you jump there over there on Patreon. We give extra content out there. So if you don't want to miss out on all that various content, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter because we're having constant theological conversations like this and sometimes it's hard to get bumped up into the algorithm. But if you stay on the newsletter, you'll see when all of this content comes out. Without further ado, I want to introduce to you my guest today, Dr. Yarnell. Would you tell us a little about yourself and your ministry before we dive into the subject matter today? Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me, Josh. I'm looking forward to our conversation. I am a believer in Jesus Christ. At the age of seven years old, I encountered God as I was reading the Bible and that totally transformed my life and I have been pursuing my relationship with the Lord ever since then and received a call as a young man into the ministry knowing that I would head into teaching but also knowing that I needed to be anchored in the local church as a pastor. And so I'm full-time professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for Worth, Texas. And I am a part-time teaching pastor at the Lakeside Baptist Church in Grandbury, Texas and five children happily married four grandchildren. But don't get me started on that. I'll have to show you pictures. Sounds good. I encourage you to grab on the full quiver. Thank you for jumping on the program for us today. You've written two books and working on a third. I kind of talking about the Trinity. It sounds like so we've got one speaking of God, one of the word, one of the spirit. And the spirit one is soon coming as I understand it. Can you explain the purpose for the series what your main objective is in trying to explain what it seems to be a systematic theology of, well, theology proper. But would you kind of unpack some of that for us? Yeah, it is actually a systematic theology but it's written to try to engage people at the basic level. And so I'm trying to tone down the academic side of systematic theology and make it more accessible to people at the lay level of pastors, whoever, but just to engage people to help them to know God, God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the one God who saves us by his grace. The first volume is here and it was entitled God published in 2024. The second volume is the one we're talking about today, I believe, and it's entitled Word. The third volume will be entitled spirit. And so it follows a trinitarian format, but it covers all of the subjects in a typical systematic theology yet written for every person. Thus the series title theology for every person. And that's the right order to write them in as well, right? Because we want to follow the creed and we'll start with God the Father and we'll work our way through the sun, land on the spirit. So that was the format of a lot of the early catechisms, a lot of the early systematic theologies was to follow the historic creed written in 325 at the Council of Micea. Our systematic theology course that we have online follows that same format, right? Of walking through, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, then we run through who is Jesus, walk through Christology and in the work of the spirit. While touching on all the kind of peripheral things as a springboard into other aspects of theology where we'll talk about the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets. We'll talk about scripture. We'll give doctrine and scripture in that. So I love the format. Pretty biblical stuff. Let's talk a little bit about the sun as we're talking about the systematic theology as it relates to this book, The Word. Before we, I want to tell the listener, first and foremost, I told you right before the program, I'd like to hang out on eternal, functional subordinationisms, that's something you bring up in your book. And I think it's something that needs to be talked about more before we get to even that. Let's just keep it kind of high level. Let's talk about Jesus being fully God and fully man as it relates to man. But folks in the pew sometimes have a hard time connecting with Jesus being human or they have a hard time connecting with Jesus being God. Can you help wrestle through some of that theologically? But then also, where do you see people stumbling over these ideas of Christ divinity or humanity? Where do you think the greater emphasis is? And maybe you can speak from your own tradition. I would imagine various traditions are going to emphasize one over the other. But yeah, as you see it, where do you think people are having hangups with either the divinity or humanity of the sun? You know, that's a great question. First of all, the doctrine of God as Trinity and the doctrine of the one-tersion Jesus Christ as truly God and truly human. These two doctrines, Trinity and Christology are at the core of the Christian faith. And so we cannot compromise on these doctrines and we must elevate these doctrines such that they become central to our very thought processes into our proclamation. It is important to get these two doctrines in particular right along with a healthy doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And once you have these doctrines correct, most of the rest of systematic theology and most of the rest of your practice as a Christian will fold out from your understanding of God and of Christ. Now with regard to Jesus Christ, that is why I wrote this book is to emphasize who Jesus Christ is. And so I worked through the biblical text looking and trying to answer the question, who is the Word of God? Who is the Son of God? Who is Jesus Christ? So these are different titles or names for the second person of the Trinity. But also what does he do? So not only who he is but what he does, but answering that question properly is not as easy as it might sound at the same time that it is very simple. The fact is that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word of God who became a human being. He died on the cross. He arose from the dead. He ascended to the right hand of the Father and from there he will one day to return and he will judge the living in the dead and he will reign eternally from his throne. And so saying that most Christians when I just said that they're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right." But then making sure that we maintain what is what I just gave you comes out of scripture. It is also conversant with the creed and absolutely maintaining that is not always as easy as it sounds. And it becomes a problem when we try to take and over explain who Christ is or when we take and we emphasize his deity at the expense of his humanity or when we emphasize his humanity at the expense of his deity or when we try to break him into both human and divine we end up with two different person. So our mind have difficulty containing the great truth of who God is in Christ and our difficulties come when we try to reduce him to our level of understanding without recognizing that there is a mystery at the core of Orthodox Christology, a biblical doctrine of Jesus Christ that causes us to step back and at a certain point say, "I know this is true, I know this is true, I'm not sure exactly how it all works out. I know it's true because scripture says it and it makes me want to worship him because he's much greater than my mind can comprehend." That's right. I love the idea of mystery and I've used the illustration before that true beauty is found in modesty. There's a kind of beauty that is clothed in such a way where you can't see every nook and cranny, leave something open to the imagination as it were. Whereas there's another kind of beauty that would be an earthly beauty that would say, "Man, we're going to leave nothing for the imagination and put everything on display and that's not true beauty." And I think that within the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology, things have been so ordained to be such as to have a godly modesty to it, and that we as theologians should speak where the Bible speaks, remain silent where the Bible is silent, and try not to stretch the theological fabric. So thin, where God has intentionally veiled certain things to the people of God. And praise God for that, because we will be in heaven with God, like the seraphim, gazing, and saying holy as we continue to see different facets of who God is throughout eternity. So I think it's right to think in terms of mystery that should not create for the listener a theological laziness not to explore what the Bible says, but just not to go beyond what the Bible says. And we've got great thinkers in church history who've done that. Now you made the case that one of the titles for Jesus is word. We see this in the Old Testament. You know, the word of the Lord appeared to Abraham. Like how does how do words appear? And we see like this kind of Old Testament picture of a pre-incarnate Christ coming. And then seems as if John picks up on that idea of the Old Testament word appearing in the word of God doing. And it seems like the word is God, but it seems like the word is maybe separate from God at the same time, like a separate person, not necessarily a separate being. So there's some interesting thoughts there. And then the Greeks had this idea of the logos, the word that was, you know, the order that ordered the universe by truth and reason and rationality. And he sandwiches these ideas together in first John, not first John, in John chapter one, in the beginning was the word. And he kind of ties both Greek and Hebrew thought of this person of the Godhead who's existed from eternity past being God and being with God. And I think it's a beautiful picture. But one thing that I I stumble across and I think you have as well is that people sometimes conflate the word Jesus and the word scripture. Right? So like we call this book the word of God, you know, the evangelical preacher says, you know, you don't look past the word, you know, like we get into our preacher voice and we dab our foreheads with our napkins or whatever. You know, the the idea that the Bible is the word and Jesus is the word is interesting because they share lots of similarities. The word of God according to second to the 316 is breathed out by God, Fahano's sauce. And we have Jesus who eternally proceeds from the Father. So there there seems to be some similarities. And yet the word is not the person as it relates to the scripture is not the person. Could you maybe extrapolate for us the similarities and yet differences between the word and the word? I know that was a lot of talking. Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's a really important question. So scripture uses the idea of the word of God in three different senses that are actually quite interrelated with one another. So in the first instance, the word is God himself the second person of the Trinity Jesus Christ. And this book, word is primarily about you know, in his person. So there's the word as the eternal person, the second person of the Trinity. There is also the word as the written revelation of God. And that is holy scripture. And so by the way, I wrote a book on that aspect with David Dockery who's the president at Southwestern Seminary. We wrote a book on special revelation in scripture in which we affirm quite clearly the evangelical doctrine that holy scripture is also the word of God. So that is not the personal word but the written word of God. And then there's actually a third sense. So the word of God comes to the prophet in the Old Testament and the prophet proclaims the word of God. And so the word is the word as person who is Jesus Christ. The word is the written scriptures, but the word is also the proclamation of Jesus Christ or the proclamation of the written word. That too is word. And each of these are interrelated. So Hebrews chapter four makes it very clear that the word of God is living in powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. And the reason that the proclaimed word and the written word are powerful is because of the living word of God who is Jesus Christ who reveals himself through the written and the proclaimed word. I hope that threefold sense helps make understand. By the way, let's be clear about this. We respect the written word of God as truly the word of God, but we don't worship the written word of God. We worship God in Christ the living word of God. No, that's right. I love that. Okay, we're going to spend a good chunk of our time talking about eternal subordination. We're going to put that that F in there and I might slip up once or twice. So let the listener recall that functional is supposed to be in there somewhere. When we talk about eternal functional subordination, could you describe for us what that is for the listener? Yeah. Because it's a comp, it can be a complex idea, but I think it's one that probably the listener maybe already believes because of reading the gospels and saying, okay, it seems as if Jesus is submitted to the Father. So they have this vision at times and I would argue a wrong vision, but a reasonable one. It's a reasonable thing to be confused about this. That the that the son is maybe lesser than the Father, that he comes from the Father. Maybe he's a there's a there's a heresy of Aryanism that says the Father has existed in eternity past and the Son came into being. That would be a pretty substantive subordinationism that wouldn't be the same as what we're necessarily talking about. But could you unpack the idea of what eternal functional subordinationism is? And maybe it would be necessary to even contrast that against a more Aryan, full-fledged subordinationism as well. Hey guys, Joshua Lewis here. 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If I could, let me step back and because I do think there are problems with eternal functional subordination. And let me use the shortened version of that called the EFS. But even before we go there, one of the reasons I wrote one of my earlier books, God the Trinity, was to try to get through the reading of Scripture who is God. And I concluded for my reading of biblical texts, detailed exegesis of such texts as the Great Commission, Matthew 28, verse 19 in particular. So when a Christian professes their faith, they are baptized in the singular name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And so the three are put with that word in the Greek, the Kai, the conjunction, they're put in a relationship of equality and unity, where there is one name at the same time that we have the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And this is the God whom we worship and the creeds which you've mentioned before actually develop out of that baptismal confession, which is the first confession of a Christian. The, you know, and Scripture elsewhere clearly maintains the unity and the threeness at the same time of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as the one true God. And so I went through the various biblical texts demonstrating the truth of God as Trinity in that book. But Christians don't live in a vacuum. We live in a world. And when we read the Bible, we read the Bible often with other people who have read the Bible. And we should. But sometimes there are people who read the Bible and misinterpret it or present the Bible in a wrong way. And this is known if the The teaching is bad enough, it gets known in Christian history. as heresy. And you mentioned Aryanism. Aryanism is one of the major heresies that gets applied to the Trinity and to Jesus Christ. It is such a bad error that those who hold it are considered to be forbidden from entering most churches and teaching in those churches. So really, Aryanism is a huge problem. The doctrine of eternal functional subordination developed centuries after Aryanism first made its appearance. Aryanism appeared in the fourth century. The Council of Nicaea, the Council of Constantinople, and many of the major councils met to try to suppress Aryanism or types of Aryanism. And we could get into that, and that's very important. That's why I recommend and encourage people to use the Nicene Creed in particular, but that Nicene Creed helps you to understand the difficulties with Aryanism. Eternal functional subordination is a doctrine that arose in the 20th century. And it arose in an attempt to answer an anthropological argument rather than to answer a theological question. So what do I mean by that? Eternal functional subordination was crafted by theologians like Wayne Gruden, George Knight, Bruce Ware, and others. And their hope was to craft a doctrine that would help them to combat something going on in particular in a Western society, but especially American society. And that was feminism. And so in an attempt to answer feminism, which they saw as endangering the distinctions between the sexes or the genders, the male and the female, they crafted a doctrine called eternal functional subordination to try to keep Christians from becoming feminists. Well, what this did is that they actually took an in order to answer that question about the relationship of human beings, they then applied those questions to God. And so they wanted to affirm the distinction between the male and the female and the authority of the male. And that's where they come up with the doctrine. And so they read texts like 1 Corinthians 11, 3 and 1 Corinthians 15, 20, 28 in particular in which they see a hierarchy in the Trinity. Now they know that Aryanism is considered to be a heresy. And so rather than referring to eternal subordination, they introduce an intermediating term called eternal functional subordination. And this is their hope to try not to fall into Aryanism. Myself, I have doubts that it can ever work without actually falling and reaching its logical conclusion, which is Aryanism or one of the errors of semi-Aryanism. But their hope was to respond to feminism and they recast the doctrine of God to respond to feminism and recognizing that assigning subordination to God eternally is problematic because it's technically heresy. They introduce the term functional. And what they mean by that is that, oh yes, yes, yes, they'll argue this father, the son, and the spirit are one God, but the three have different levels of authority. What I don't think that they realized is that Aryas himself would agree with them that there is a difference in authority between the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. When they read 1 Corinthians 15, 28, many of them actually see the authority of the son as coming to an end and being returned to the father. And by doing that, they also adopt a type of heresy that many of them are not even aware of, but that the early church fathers were quite aware of. And that is a type of heresy called Martellianism, which sees the Kingdom of God coming in Christ to an end as far as Christ rule. And so they want to maintain the male female relationship so that the male has authority over the female among human beings. And so they introduced within the Godhead an authority of the father over the son from an eternal perspective. And that's what eternal functional subordination is. I think it is a grave error theologically and I would encourage people not to hold it, but if they have been taught this to step back and return to the biblical text and read it again to make sure that they don't fall into this great error. Yeah, I'm with you. I have the exact same concerns. Just to flesh out some of the complementary and language for people who are out there. The primary argument was that men and women have the same dignity, value, and worth as human and as image bearers, but their role within creation has a determined function that wives are just submit to their husbands and that kind of thing. And that there's a role within church for male leadership. And then the feminist space was saying any kind of functional change in roles then requires it then necessitates some kind of inferiority. And in order to defend this, they would say, well, no, look at God. God submits himself to himself. The son is equal in value and dignity and worth as the father, but he functions different, not only in the incarnation, but in eternity past because I think the aim in trying to articulate this was that Jesus didn't take on a submission temporarily. It was a submission eternally showing that again, the father and the son can have equal dignity, value, and worth, but then different roles and functions. Now, I have a difficulty with this here. Here's my primary difficulty. Well, before I get to that, let me ask you this because we're already talking about complementarianism. Should we suspect, should we be suspicious of doctrines that are inspired from cultural moments opposed to being gleaned out of scripture? How do we engage with that? Certainly, even providentially, they're going to be cultural moments that arise that causes to run back to the text. I mean, I'm thinking of the transgendered movement, right? Like, there probably wasn't a need in the first century for early fathers to be like, well, this is a male according to the Bible. And this is a female according to the Bible because it was pretty well defined in the cultural ethos. Nobody was trying to become, well, no one may be a too strong of a word for people who are familiar with history, but like it wasn't a cultural problem of the day. So how much suspicion should we have when things like this begin to emerge? You know, I wrote about how doctrine develops historically in this book, the formation of Christian doctrine. That was one of the first major texts that I wrote. And there's no doubt that new questions prompt Christians to return to the biblical text and try to answer those questions. And so it is not wrong to take and to develop doctrine on the basis of trying to answer new questions. What I have discovered is that actually many of the questions that we have today, we're actually addressed by Christians typically at some point in history. And so, but it's not wrong to try to answer the questions where it does become a problem is when we try to remake God in order to address a question about our own society. And so we have to be careful not to remake God in our image or in the image that we like human beings to have. And I think that is the difficulty we face when we try to answer a sociological question. And then go back and read our sociological question into the text. And so as you know, there is a fundamental difference between exegesis, the reading out of truth from the Word of God and isegesis, which is us imposing into the scripture, what is our idea and our question. And so I think the difficulty with what EFS has done is not that they tried to answer the questions, but it's how they went about trying to answer the questions. And it is forgetting that actually, we must uphold who God is before we go to humanity. And we must remember that humanity is made in the image of God and not vice versa. And so let us be absolutely careful not to impose human categories upon divine reality, but to receive from the biblical text that which the text is teaching. Now we could go into particular texts in order to address this, but let's be clear there is a unity that scripture always upholds with regard to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that unity has to do with who God is, but also how God works. So in particular with the question of authority, the fact is Jesus said all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. So as a human being, he receives all authority and there's no limit to that authority. And moreover, when you read the book of Daniel or second Samuel, the kingdom of Jesus Christ is eternal. It participates in divine rule forever. And of course we know this also from the fact the throne of the Father and of the Lamb and of the sevenfold Spirit in Revelation 21 and 22 is inhabited by all three forever. And so we have to be careful to make sure that we answer our questions, but that we don't impose our questions or our ideas on the biblical text. And part of making sure that we don't do that is actually listening to other Christians from other times and places who have asked similar questions and have worked through these problems and really have something to teach us. I think the early church fathers, I think the medieval theologians, I think the reformation era theologians, I think theologians from Africa and Asia have something to teach. Those of us who are theologians from Europe and the Americas. And so we have to do this together. And as we do so, we will be kept from falling into error. Now the fact is this, you don't have to reconfigure the Trinity in order to be a complimentary area. You can read the scripture and gain that doctrine without having to refashion the doctrine of the Trinity. This is something that I think that grew to me and where and others have fallen into error about. And error not only in their method, but in the final result. No, I agree. I think it well said. Well said. But for me, I remember in the early, I don't know, 2020, 2021, 2022, when I was, you know, kind of coming to grips with some of this theology and reading up on some of the debate involving it. I remember what settled it for me was the idea of the unified will that the father, son and spirit share the one divine will. And when that, when I understood that, it made much more sense. It made it, it made a total functional subordinationism kind of incoherent. It actually solved a lot of theological problems for me. You know, not that I had problems, but questions of like people saying that the son dying on the cross was, you know, a cosmic child abuse. You know, the father is essentially the drunken madman who comes downstairs and Jesus jumps on the way and says, no, dad, beat me up instead instead of humanity and the father just beats up the son. I mean, these really, really crass theological ideas that have come up from Brian's on and others that are just that are really fallacious and don't understand the doctrine of the Trinity. They're trying to answer questions of atonement without understanding the Trinitarian doctrine. It caused to these problems. But if you understand that the father and the son share the same divine will, then there's no function within the Godhead. It's not as if the father is like, now you must go to the earth and Jesus was like, well, maybe not. And when you begin to divide the wills of the Trinity into individual wills, and if any of those wills differ in any way, then you have a part of the Trinity that is more divine, more holy, more righteous in their judgment because another member of the Trinity wishes to do something else. So what is even functional subordination if we have one divine will? Okay, so I've I've I've again, is that a question? No, but that's something that I've wrestled through myself. I'm curious. If there's anything there on the divine will that when you have looked at EFS, if you found the divine will or the one unified will of the Trinity as a strong apologetic against those who hold the EFS position. You know, this is a great question. And the early church fathers were addressing this issue. And careful theologians will actually go back and listen to what they had to say. And so even among the first of the ecumenical councils, they were addressing the issue of the will. They were addressing the issue of divine rule by the father and the son and the spirit equally as one God. Jesus, when he was in the garden of Gessimony, he prays. And he says, "Never the less, not my will, but thine be done." What does he mean by that? Is he sane as EFS proponents argue that as the eternal son, he is submitting his will to the different will of the eternal father? I don't think that's what he's saying. And Maximus the Confessor, one of the great early church fathers, made the same argument that I make. And that is that when Jesus as a human being is surrendering his will to God, he knows the cross is coming. And he knows he's going to suffer physically. He's going to suffer death. And who wants to suffer death? And that's why he says, you know, father, if you could, if there was any other way, take this from me. But nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. He is taking and submitting his human will to the divine will. And so he, Jesus Christ, has what Orthodox theologians describe as two wills. He himself is truly human and truly divine as God, he has a will as a human being, he has a will. And if he doesn't have a will as a human being, then he's not truly human. And you fall into all sorts of heresies if you have that problem, a pollinarianism and so on. What we need to remember at all times are these two major truths. There is one God who is three person. Keep that one truth and never let go of it. At the same time, you must hold to the truth that there is one Jesus Christ who has two natures. That one Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human. And so you must hold to the Trinity, the one God who is three persons, at the same time that you hold to the unity of the person of Christ who has two natures. And so holding those two truths, the Trinity and what is called the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ together is going to keep you from all sorts of errors. Now why did Jesus have to submit his human will to the divine will? It goes back to our very salvation. Jesus Christ is going to save us. He's going to have to be truly human. And what he does in the language of Ephesians 1, 10, he recapitulates our humanity. In the language of Hebrews 2 and verse 10, he takes and perfects our humanity. And so what he has done in the Garden of Guessamini on the cross in the totality of his human life is he obeyed where we disobeyed. And therefore he takes and perfects humanity where we corrected humanity by our sin. And by perfecting our humanity, he gives us a way back into the very presence of the Father. The fact is that simple things cannot come into the presence of a holy God. And you have to be holy in order to come into the presence of God. That's eternal life is to live with God forever, to have the vision of God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit forever. And if you as a human being were to come apart from Christ, you would come into the presence of God as an imperfect human being and receive divine judgment. However, what Jesus Christ has done is he's perfected our humanity in his life, in his death, in his resurrection, and thereby through uniting with Christ by faith, we who are in ourselves unholy are made holy by the humanity of Christ through the gift of faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. And so our salvation and And here I'm drawing again on Maximus the Confessor, our salvation utterly depends upon the perfection of our humanity by Jesus Christ. And to perfect our humanity, he has to have a human will. And so he submits his will to God. And that means within himself, he is submitting his human will to his divine will, spriter as only one will of God. Yeah, that's good. You know, if we're quoting church fathers, I mean, you know, this one's on the tip of your tongue. I'm sure Gregory even has the answers. What he has not assumed, he has not healed, right? So this idea that Jesus has to have a mind. And anyone who says he doesn't have a mind is bereft of a mind says Gregory. He's talking trash. But that idea that he assumed a real human will that he might save and sanctify that human will. So when we see Jesus using language of submission to the Father, I wholeheartedly agree we're speaking of Jesus in his incarnate state as his human state, his human state that I don't want to divide the essence here. But when I speak of Jesus being fully God and fully man, it is to be truly human is to submit to God, right? Like that is what it is to be human. And what we see in Jesus, living out that humanity is really being in submission to the Father as a role of the human person. So let's go ahead. Let me just, let me just add to this. And this is the language of athanasius of Gregory and so this is a Marxist and Confessor of all through Christian theologians as divine Jesus Christ is truly God in every way that the Father and the Spirit are God, the one God. You cannot divide his ontology. You can't divide his authority. You can't divide his eternity. You can't reduce it. And I have to tell you, a major passion in my heart is that we ought never allow Christian teachers to diminish Jesus Christ in his deity in any way. So as God, he is everything that God is. Jesus said this, everything that the Father has is mine. And there's no limit to that claim. So every divine action and perfection attribute, ontology, function, everything divine about the Father is divine about the Son and the Spirit. The only difference eternally between the Father and the Son is the fact that the Son is eternally generated by the Father. The only difference between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son is that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds. And so that's the only difference to introduce a functional difference is to introduce something that Scripture does not. Now with regard to deity, everything that Christ is as God so as the Father and so as the Spirit, everything that Christ is as a human being, he is less than God. He is the Creator God who became a creature. And in that process, never lost any part of his divine reality. So let us make sure that at the same time that we proclaim that he is equal with and one with God. We also recognize that as a human being, he is less than God. And so the sense of superiority and inferiority has nothing to do with this deity. It has to do with his humanity being less than his deity. His humanity was taken to himself. The language of assumption is Pauline or he became flesh that's John. That language describes what happens in his humanity. And so his humanity is less than deity. And that's true for him. He is both truly human and truly God. Yeah. I think many scholars have said this in times past. I can't find the source on it off the top of my head. But it's not a subtraction of divinity. It's an addition of human weakness. And to look at it this way, I think it is helpful to think it's the addition of human weakness to the person of the son that takes place in the incarnation. Now, okay, there are so many different directions. I want to, I do want to exegetically like tackle a few passages, but you brought up function just a moment ago. And this gets complicated because we have the doctrine of inseparable operations, right, which says that any one act that God does, all of God does, right, including the person. So yes, God creates the heavens and the earth, but he seems to do that through the word by the power of the Spirit, if you will. Jesus is the one who dies on the cross. The Father doesn't land the cross. The Spirit doesn't land the cross. And yet we see in Hebrews that the eternal Spirit offers up the Son to God in heaven. So we see that even in the crucifixion, all persons participate. And yet there is a termination of a given function on one person of the Trinity. The Father isn't poured out on the church. The Son isn't poured out of the church. The Spirit is poured out on the church. But the Father and the Son pour out the Spirit on the church. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. So there is this conversation. I want to make sure I get the word right. I wrote it down because I remembered it, but I'm going to get it wrong. Eternal operations, no, operations of origin. I think it's the language where it says that eternally the Son proceeds from the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. And that ontological nature of the Trinity flushes out in the economic Trinity, which is how the Trinity relates to humanity. And the argumentation there would be that in the same way that the Spirit is poured out on the church because the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, the function reflects the ontology. There is an argumentation from this that says the Son subordinates himself in the incarnation, but only does so because that represents, that reflects his operation of origin with the Father. More theologically convoluted question is way more technical. How would you engage with that kind of articulation of EFS? Well, I would say that eternal relations of origin, and that's the language, eternal relations of origin, that the Father begets the Son eternally. That is, there's no beginning or ending to the generation of the Son. And the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father or from the Father and the Son, these truths, the eternal relations of origin, do not change the divine reality in any way. Now, that is the eternal relations of origin. That is an intra-divine movement that is just that way forever. This part of what you talked about is the missions. So, the mission of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. So, the Father sends the Son and sends the Spirit. This is the constant language of the biblical text. The Father in sending the Son does not take and reduce the Son in any way. The Father and the Son sending the Spirit does not reduce or diminish the Spirit in any way. And so, I would argue that you can hold to what are the, and this is called, appropriated operations when the Son comes and becomes a human being dives on the cross, arises from the dead. This is an appropriated operation that is particular to the Son. But the Father is the one who sends the Son to do this. And the Spirit is the one who miraculously in the womb of the Virgin Mary gives human life to the Son. And the Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son. There is no diminishing in the deity of the Spirit for the Father to send the Son and the Spirit. The degree of Nazion's, I think, says this the best, when he brings together all of his biblical knowledge in his great theological orrations. These are five sermons that I would recommend every theology student to read. In one of those sermons, I believe it's the fourth one, he makes the argument that at the same time that the man was dying on the cross, the Son as God was ruling from eternal. At the same time that he dies, he reigns. He is eternal life and can never die. And yet he takes to himself our death and overcomes it. This is the miracle of the incarnation, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we must never. reduces deity even as we hold to the reality of the changes in his humanity. As God he does not change, he's immutable. As man, he suffers, he undergoes change. And that's a mystery to us, but it is nevertheless the reality that Scripture puts forth as the mystery. Can I take a moment and just come back to that language of mystery for just a moment? Please, yeah. We often hear theologians refer to this mystery or that mystery. Sometimes you hear people talk about providence or election, and hyper individualize it and say, well, I can't explain it, but that's part of the mystery. Listen, Scripture uses the language of mystery in a particular way. The mystery is God's plan worked in Jesus Christ. And so let's not take our speculations and say this is part of the divine mystery when it's not revealed in Scripture. Scripture refers to the incarnation, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the mystery. Christ himself is the mystery of God who is saving us from our sins. That's the mystery and it's a mystery more over that has been revealed. The mystery has been made plain in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So the mystery is a supremely Christological doctrine and let's be careful not to take the language of mystery that Scripture uses and stack a whole bunch of other ideas on top of it to justify what are often just merely human speculations. No, that's good. That's good. I think backing up to what you had said right before the the excerpt on mystery is the idea that the finite cannot assume the infinite. So this idea, I remember preaching through John recently and I don't know if it was John 8 or John 7. I can't recall off the top of my head, but I think it was John 8 where Jesus makes this statement where I am. Yeah, where I am you cannot come. And that was just interesting. He didn't say where I am going. Later he will say where I am going you cannot come. But what was interesting is he said where I am present tense and he was speaking of heaven. He was speaking of the presence of all that he was speaking. And in his humanity was claiming, well, not in his humanity, but like being both human and divine in that moment was speaking, I think of his very divine nature saying where I am at this moment, not physically in front of you, but enthroned in the heavens. And I just thought that was a beautiful picture that's picked up on here by by. If I can take and just piggyback on that for a second. The fact is Jesus Christ, and you see this in the Gospel of John in so many ways, Jesus Christ claims that everything he says, he is saying what the Father says. Everything that he does, he does what the Father does. And so the inseparable operations includes the very words of Jesus Christ. And the inseparable operations means that at one moment he can say, I and the Father are what? And when he says this in John 10 and verse 30, there's no contradiction when he says later in John 1428, the Father is greater than I. How can he say both these things at the same time? As God, he and the Father are one. As man, the Father is greater than he is. And so we have to remember every time we hear Jesus Christ, we are hearing the man who is truly God and truly human. And we must remember every time, and this is the language of Athenations called the scope of Scripture. Greg Reeb spells it out as well. If you see a weakness or a limitation applied to Jesus Christ in the Holy text, he weeps, he suffers, he dies. That limitation refers to his humanity. If you see an exaltation, a perfection that perfection pertains to his deity, you can never reduce his deity, we must always hold to his deity and his humanity. I and the Father are one is a reference to his deity. The Father is greater than is a reference to his humanity. Anytime you see a limitation, it applies to his humanity. That's the Athenations scope of Scripture. Anytime you see something about his perfection or his eternality, that is a reference to his deity. And we must hold both those truths without ever diminishing either truth. If you diminish his humanity, you are denied that he can save us because he has to be truly human to save us human beings. That means he has to die. That means he has to rise again as a human being. At the same time, you must uphold that he is truly God. He reigns from eternity even at the same time that he dies upon the cross. Okay, I love that. And I think when we're engaging with that, you've already unpacked the John 1428, the Father is greater than I, which is one thing I wanted you to pull at. But let's look at 1 Corinthians 1528. I know we're kind of wrapping some of this up. We're at 55 minutes. So we'll kind of let this be the close. And they'll maybe ask you some closing thoughts. But 1 Corinthians 1528, when all things are subject to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him who put all things under subjection to him. A lot of him's there. When he is speaking of the Son, when he himself, right, all things have been subject to him, then he will subject all things essential to the Father that God may be all in all. And the EFS folks will say, look, this is a picture of Jesus after the resurrection returning to this place of authority. And still is eternally subordinated to the Father in this position of submission. How would you engage there with 1 Corinthians 1528? I think the difficulty for the EFS theologian is there they're not reading 1 Corinthians 1528. With the rest of the biblical canon. It is clear that Jesus Christ is truly God in every way. And there ought to be no diminishing of his authority in it way. So in the book word in chapter 4 in particular, I work through the errors that the early church encountered with regard to who Jesus Christ is. In chapter 13, I work through more modern errors with regard to who Jesus Christ is. And I go back and review, for instance, the reading of 1 Corinthians 15 verses 20 through 28. On pages 360 to 361, I have a paragraph. I just want to read you that I think may help people to get to the bottom of this. We, I write, may not limit the lordship of Christ by reference to the subjection of all things in Christ to God. Rather, Christ reconstituted humanity by fulfilling the priest's key role, the first Adam failed to accomplish. This is why Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 identifies Christ as the second or last Adam. For just as in Adam, all die. So also in Christ, all will be made a lot. God is subjecting everything to Christ, the new Adam, Psalm 110, the most cited Psalm in the New Testament makes it clear. The Father is subjecting everything to Christ, right? So God is subjecting everything to Christ, the new Adam. When Christ completes his human task of abolishing all re and all authority and power, every creaturely thing will be submitted through his humanity to God the Father. So the recapitulating, the reheading, the re putting every authority in its proper place under Christ, through the headship of Christ in the judgment will finally restore the divine kingdom to its original, creational attempt. So Paul's Corinthian statement, when everything is subject to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subject to the one who subjected everything to him so that God may be all in all, does not limit the authority of Christ's deity, but subjects our humanity. The problem with the EFS, theologians is they have subjected the deity of Jesus Christ. That's a diminishing of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. What is being subjected is humanity. It's part of our salvation. Paul summarizes here what scripture expounds in Hebrews 2 and Ephesians 1. That is that in the unity of his own person Christ submits humanity to God again. The One Lord Jesus Christ remains truly divine and authority while perfecting humanity through his human obedience. The Son's divine nature and divine work are co-extensive with the Trinity. Divine authority is unqualified for the Son as for the Father and the Spirit. Essentially, by the way, remember Christ is actually named the power of God. If you want to know authority, you have his power. All authority, all power belongs to Christ and Christ himself is called in 1 Corinthians 1, 24, the power of God. How dare anyone try to reduce that power in any way? He is always divine in his authority and there is no limit to his kingdom. That's why I think it's also important to go back and study scripture in its totality, but also to study church history because the heresy of Markeleonism, which limits the kingdom of Christ, has to be refuted today just as it was in the 4th century. We're at an hour, your book handles a lot more than the functional subordination. If we're going to do a video and I'm going to talk about all Christology, it's like, "Well, we're all over the place and I want people to be able to walk away with a single theological takeaway point." I think this is an important one to me as I was reading your book. It was an important one to you. If you have any kind of closing thoughts, would there be about your book more broadly or specifically the subject that you want our audience walking away thinking about? What would that be? I'll turn it over to you for a closing thought. Yeah, I would encourage you to read your Bible and don't read it in order to try to solve somebody else's problem. You read it to find out who God is and what God is doing. Then take what God is according to Scripture and let that form the rest of your theology. I think the difficulty with a lot of theologies and you see this by the way, not only with EFS, you see it with a rise among the evangelicals of what is known as conodicism, which reduces Christ's deity and it's actually quite a very popular doctrine among evangelicals. I would encourage you to go back and make sure that you're actually upholding the dignity, the honor, the glory of Jesus Christ. I wrote this book to remind us to glorify Jesus Christ and that would be my encouragement. Please read this, read other scholars who are orthodox in their Trinity and in their Christology and turn away from the false teachings like EFS and conodicism. Yeah, it's so good. Hey, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I'll tell you, Dr. Yarnel, I really appreciate the conversation. Super-adifying, encouraging me. I get started up when talking about the Trinity and Christology and all that fun stuff because I'm a bit of a nerd and I enjoy the nitty-gritty of it all. I hope you guys enjoyed it as well. If you did, make sure to subscribe, like the video, share it around to all of your subordinationist friends. Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode and we'll see you next Monday and Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. Central Standard Time. Peace out.