The Sean McDowell Show - Answering Your Most Difficult Questions About the Trinity | LIVE Q&A

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

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All right, friends, I think we are live here on Talbot Tuesday with Dr. Fred Sanders to talk about the Trinity, although you're not technically a Talbot. You're a Biola professor, but you are, I'm going to say, one of the world-renowned experts on the Trinity, so we're bringing you on. You're ready to talk all things, Trinity? Ready to talk Trinity. And Talbot-friendly, Talbot adjacent, and glad to be here. Totally agree.

just tell us really quickly. What got you into studying the Trinity of all areas of study you could have? Yeah, I mean, it goes way back to not long after my conversion as a teenager. I just was reading the Bible for myself and trying to make sense of the things we say in church and the things we hear. And I got saved in a Methodist church, so I had Wesley Hems in my head and just trying to put it all together. And I just read the Bible and thought, the only way this works is if God eternally exists is Father, Son, and Spirit. I mean, I kind of made up the doctrine of the Trinity on my own from the Bible when I was 16. Okay, this is crazy. I've never asked you this because I did not make up the Trinity.

I learned the Trinity and then in reverse was like, does this make sense? Is it rational? Is it biblical? You were studying the Bible and are like – and tell us what you mean by the Trinity and how you got there. Yeah, and I was kind of starting from zero. I had a Christian upbringing, but I had sort of forgotten at all in early teen years. And so when I got saved, I was literally surprised at church to find out the Gospels told the same story four times. I was, okay, so let me get this straight.

There's an Old Testament, a New Testament, and then there's like four times you get the story of Jesus. So it was really beginner's level. But there was a snowstorm. This was in Kentucky, and I just spent a lot of time reading and trying to understand on my own what was going on. It was Ephesians 1 is where I kind of turned to the corner. I was putting together a lot of different pieces about the Father saving us and the son dying for us and the spirit living within us. and all this was God's work somehow. And I just looking at Ephesians 1, 3 through 14, you know,

blessed be God who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing, just as he chose us in Christ, we're redeemed through his blood, we're sealed by the spirit. They're all this thinking, this only works if the one God that we're talking about is somehow he's the father and the son and to the spirit. That is unbelievable to me. Yeah, when people say, you know, the Trinity is not really in the Bible, right? I try to be polite and meet them where they are

and be reasonable and listen to what they mean. by that. But deep down, somewhere in the back of my mind, I think, yeah, it's got to be there because I didn't know nothing when I was 16, and I just saw it there. That's amazing. Okay, so friends, we're here with Dr. Fred Sanders, who's a professor at Biola University, and gosh, you and I've been, I don't know, 20-some years when you first came here going way back. Now, I've had two videos drop recently on the Trinity with Tomas, Samuel, a former Muslim, who thought it was ridiculous, crazy, polytheistic. Came Christian, he's a defender of it. And then William Lane Craig, arguably one of the lead an apologist and Christian philosophers

today laying out his model. Now, we're going to get into some questions. We have people submit at least a dozen questions. I already see some live here that are great, and we're going to take some spontaneous ones. But I think it might be helpful if you explain just a little bit. Where do you agree and maybe disagree in your approach to the Trinity from Dr. Craig? Oh, from Dr. Craig. Yeah.

So I think we both agree that what I really like. like about Dr. Kray's approach is he emphasizes the Christian, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a form of monotheism. So I think the label he currently affixes to it in his new book, Volume 2B, is tripersonal monotheism. That's right. Yeah, that's nice. So he's solid on that, and he's got a great traditional apologetic argument from Scripture about the deity of the sun, the deity of the spirit. So a lot in common, you know, we're both on Team Trinity. What we really diverge is, I affirm with the great tradition that the Bible is best interpreted the way Nicaea interpreted it, that the one God who eternally exists in three persons eternally exists as Father, Son, and Spirit, and that Father,

Son, and Spirit are related to each other in ways that are eternal relations and that those are how he's revealed. So the Father sends the Son, which reveals or enacts among us, the fact that the Son eternally is from the Father within the life of God. So that's the doctrine of eternal generation, And it's kind of the theological core of how to talk about what Nicaea affirmed about the Trinity. That's really helpful. We'll get into unpacking some of that. But if you have a question for Dr. Sanders, write question in caps and then state it here, and we will do our best to take it. So here's the first question.

This is pretty sophisticated. We're going to do a live one here. This is – I won't even read the name, but something related – I won't even read it. It says, what do you think about the eternal subordination of the sun? should we caution against it or accept it as a view that we can disagree on. Now, maybe explain what's meant by eternal subordination of the Son for if people aren't familiar with that term, and then give us your take on it. Yeah. So the proposal, I don't want to call it a doctrine, I guess, because I think it's false. So I try to save the doctrine for a good doctrine.

It's the teaching that since the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, obeys the Father, he must have eternally obeyed the Father within the life of the Trinity, that even the actual distinction and relation between Father and the Son must be that the Father commands and the Son obeys. And so that's not something that is just a condition of being incarnate. That is the eternal life of the Son. And for some of the people who've taught this, it's what really distinguishes them. Like if you ask, what's the difference between the Father and the Son? They're both God.

So what's the difference? What's the distinction? Some of the EFS, or sometimes they call it ERAS, which stands for eternal relations of authority and submission. Not the Taylor Swift tour, but yeah. Thank you. Yeah, just clarify. Yeah, so that would be the actual distinction is a relationship in which the father

command and the son obeys within the life of God from all eternity. And to them, they would say that's why the father sent the son because he's commanding him back at home in heaven, so he commands him to go to Earth. Okay, so eternal, obviously no beginning, no end. This, you might say, is built into God's character, that's that. the father commands and the son obeys, this is who God is and what God is, even if God chose never to have an incarnation and reveal himself to us, that eternal subordination would be built into God's character independent of creation and incarnation.

That's the EFS teaching. And they use the word functional because they want to clarify that to their minds, that is not subordination. They don't think that the son is less than. So these are people who, they affirm the Trinity, they wouldn't say the sun is eternally co-equal, co-essential, co-essential, co-essential, co-eternal, and co-equal. But he obeys. So your criticism of this, it seems like somebody could say, give me the biblical support for it, one, but then second, and this is some of Craig's concern in his model with examples of subordinationism, is that do, is there really the equality?

that we have in a being God who is three divine persons, can there be that kind of subordination built into God's character and still have that level of ontological similarity or commonality? Right. And that's the problem. So critics of EFS, and EFS doctrine is it's unorthodox. Like it's a form of Trinitarianism, but it's a defective form according to critics. Like heresy. According to critics. Yeah, yeah. It's heresy. I mean, there was never a council about it. or anything, but, and the people who affirm it affirm three persons, equal persons in the one God.

And so I want to use the word heresy for people who actually deny the Trinity. When someone teaches the Trinity very badly with a serious flaw in it that we need to warn people about, I still think that's wrong, but not every wrong idea is a heresy. Okay, so before we come back to questions, one more for clarification, denying the Trinity, would this be, there's kind of the dance between the social Trinitarianism and what, what Bill Craig calls the anti-social Trinitarianism, and we all have different languages for these things. One wants to maintain the threiness. The other side wants to maintain the oneness. And there's different models to say God is one and God is three. Is it heresy when you deny the threiness or the oneness? Is that the line that makes it heresy when it comes to the trinity or at least one of the lines? Yeah, it would be heresy to deny threiness or oneness. You wouldn't be affirming the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. So on these different philosophical models that people get committed to, both of them are trying to affirm threeness and oneness. Right. Now, both of them accuse the other of blowing it one way or the other. But that's kind of like one of those Calvinism and Armenianism fights, right? Both have to affirm human responsibility and divine sovereignty and both think the other side cheats.

But one, so oneness has to be ontological, though, not just oneness and purpose. Oh, yeah. Like we had three beings. And it's a Latter-day Saint view that there's three gods, tri-persons, and they're one in terms of purpose, but not one substantially. You would say that's an example of something that's outside of the Christian Orthodox lane of understanding who God is. That's one example of, you would call that heresy. Yes. Fair?

Yeah. Okay. There are lots of things that go by the name social Trinity. If you're talking about like a radical social trinitarianism where the only unity that those three have is they're the same kind of thing and do they agree about stuff, that's a committee, you know, that's not the kind of on oneness we need. I've been on committees. They're not divine.

Okay. Committees are not divine. I love it. Okay. Helpful. Let's go to some more questions here. Okay. Hey, some people are seriously savvy,

theologically here, Fred. He says, does the Holy Spirit perceive from the father and the son or the father only? Now, before people click, Elaine, go, why are we even talking about this? This is a huge issue, historically speaking. So why does this issue matter? And what's kind of at stake with how we answer this and what's your take on it? Yeah. So this is one of the hardest issues to say anything helpful about.

in a sort of a public setting where there's a range of levels of knowledge, because some people are just now hearing that people actually argue about this, other people are deeply committed to it and lead with the short question, what about the fili-o-o-a? So to answer it, you've got to go, well, our story starts in 325. And I always feel like, Demsel Washington, like, you know, setting a clock, like, okay, let me equalize this. So, yeah, there is a disagreement among two major branches of the Christian church

over whether we should talk about the Holy Spirit as, proceeding from the father, or proceeding from the father and from the son. Now, just to clarify, we're not talking about how the Holy Spirit is sent into salvation history. Actually, everyone who is a competent Bible reader agrees that the father and the son send the Holy Spirit into salvation history. Says it like five times in the Gospel of John, I will ask the Father, and he will send the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who I will send from the Father. We all agree about that, unless you're highlighting verses in black in the Bible, you know, it's just right there. In black. The question is that sending into salvation history

is that based on an eternal life in which the spirit is always sort of breathed out from the father and only from the father. So on that view it's like the son is begotten of the father, that's why he's the son. The spirit is not begotten or he'd be like the brother or the grandson or the other brother

or something like the other son or something like that. The spirit's breathed out by the father. The East wants to say, period. That's it. And the Nicene Creed from 381 says only that. I believe in the whole Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who together with the Father and Son, is worshipped and glorified, who proceeds from the Father.

At some point in the long history of the world, the West began reciting the Nicene Creed of 381 with the additional claim, I believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, Phileo Quay, and from the son. Oh, okay. Yeah, the Quay is a little and. It just comes after the word Phileas. Okay. Well, we'll let that one sit for right now. Now, there's so much more we can go down that road. Okay, so this one is a little bit, this came from a skeptic.

I don't often take questions frame like this, but I'm going to throw it in and let it respond. This person says, quote, all you Trinitarians are deceived liars. Show me one scripture that says God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Those words aren't in the Bible. Only God the Father is in the Bible. Yeah, well, it's hard to address because it's a little bit of a puppet show, right? the imaginary person that he wants to argue with is someone who dogmatically asserts that the phrase God the Son is in the Bible or he's got that impression from somebody. God the Son is a helpful

traditional way of describing the doctrine of the deity of Christ. So we say he's the son of God, that's biblical language, but we also say when we're naming who this person is, we collect his essential identity as God, having the one who has the divine nature, and then we specify his personal identity as the son. So it's a really handy phrase, but it's a phrase from theological tradition, which is a helpful commentary on what the Bible says. Okay, so the language, God, the Father, that's biblical language. So the assumption seems to be is if Jesus was also equally divine and the Holy Spirit was also equally divine, we'd see the same language as we see for the Father. God the Father, we'd see God the Son, we'd see God the Holy Spirit.

We don't see the same language. Therefore, they're not God in the same way. The assumption is that the doctrine flows from similar language. Well, one question would be, is that necessarily true? And I would say, no. In fact, sometimes I think, like in the Greek karyos referring Lord to Jesus, is a way of distinguishing him from the father, equally divine, but a different term to show that they're not the same person and avoid the mistake of modalism,

even though the term wasn't used at that point, it would still avoid that heresy. So the question is, not are the words God the Father used, but does the Bible teach that the Father is divine? The Son is divine and the Spirit is divine. We don't have to give a whole lecture here, but of course I would go straight. So my favorite passages would be obviously in John, John 11, John 11, John 11, John 11, John 11, John 858, 1030 and 31, 2028. I mean, so I think crystal clear that Jesus is God equal to the Father, even though he's subordinate in his role. I don't want to take us aside.

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Take advantage of this opportunity and call now 800. 712, 2,300. Advertisement sponsored by Legal Help Center may not be available in all states, not available in California. That's how Theos used for Jesus, which is usually used of the Father. Right, right. Of course, to the Holy Spirit, we can point towards Acts 5. You didn't lie to men. You lied towards the Holy.

you lie towards God who's the Holy Spirit. Yeah, Isaiah 63. I was in your midst. I put my spirit in your midst, but you grieved my spirit. And then Ephesians 430 quotes it as, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. So the deity and the distinct personhood of the Spirit. Good stuff.

So, you know, sometimes I don't pick people that attack like this, but when it says you're deceived liars, there's one thing to say that somebody's wrong. It's another thing to say that somebody's directly a liar. Yeah. So I try to not attribute to people who differ from me as being liars. liars, even if I think they are deceived. I could do a sympathetic read of that hostile question.

If you're told all your life that Christians believe in the Trinity, which means there are three persons in one essence, almost none of those words are in the Bible. Trinity, person, three essence. Like, those are all commentary that you read the Bible and say, here's what I think this means. Because if we just memorize the words and bark them back and forth at each other, we could disagree about them, but not know it unless we pony up an actual specification of what we mean by what we're reading. So you can understand the disappointment. If you're taught, okay, if you read the Bible, what you're going to see is the Trinity, three persons in one being, then you read it. And none of

those words occur. You're going to as, oh, you really gave me the boiled down summary commentary version. I actually, sometimes I'll say the word Trinity is a brilliant commentary on scripture. And so if someone was to fight about the Trinity, I'll come fight about the Trinity, but I want to about the text, not the commentary. And so that's what you just did by constructing the doctrine of the deity of the sun from a range of evidence that all has to be handled the way it's really sitting there in Scripture, right? I think it's so important to acknowledge that the New Testament usually reserves the word God for the first person of the Trinity. God, Theos, so loved the world that he sent his son. Now, it's also worth going on to say, by the way, there's six or 12 or 14 passages where

Theos is applied to Jesus, and there's a great book on that by Murray Harris. Romans 9-5, Titus 213, John 1-1, and John 1118. But I don't want to make it look like my case stands or falls with the word chaos being applied to. Because it's the use of the word Lord to apply to Jesus, or his names, his actions, his attributes, the fact that he's seated at the right hand. All those things go to the case for the deity of Christ. So what would you say? I see a question about who we should pray to. I'm going to come back to that one in a minute.

But I'm curious, how would you respond to the claim that the Trinity was invented, kind of in, I don't know, whether it's at Nicaea or in the 4th century, when we had this Greek thinking we're reading back into and inventing this doctrine that's not there? How would you respond to that common objection? Yeah. So I guess you could build on the fact that I just mentioned all this helpful theological terminology that's sort of theological commentary on what's there in scripture, so Trinity essence. If you want to flag all those words as Greek or somehow infected by or carrying Greek metaphysical

presuppositions or something, then I could see why someone would say that. But the Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking church fathers who wrote these books and had these discussions and had these arguments were constantly appealing to Scripture. And they were not saying, let us invent a doctrine. They were saying, this is what we believe. the Bible teaches. They were always presenting it as the teaching of Scripture. So would you say it's a movement towards clarity using language that itself is not in the Bible, but language to articulate what the Bible itself teaches? Is that fair?

Yeah, and the greatest breakthroughs tended to be sort of providentially when serious heresies arose, because you can say lots of things in a high trust environment when you all kind of believe the right stuff. You know, we, we often. say bad sentences about our good theology, and we cut each other some slack on it. Like, yeah, that didn't quite come out right, but I think I know what you mean by that. But then someone says, you know, I think the son is less than the father. You mean like the incarnate son? No, I mean, I think the son before the incarnation is a creature that the father made.

Like, okay, that's, if you seriously mean what you just said, we now have to invent some ways of describing why you're wrong that are more elaborate and more explicit than the way the Bible's talking. Here's a question. It says, we know the Bible says they are equal in purpose, referring to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Where in the Bible does it say they're equal in something else, such as nature or essence? Where's the oneness that was later the humusias and the substance language that come up?

We don't see that in the Bible. So how do we come to the conclusion there's the oneness in essence in the Bible itself? Yeah. There are a lot of ways to get at this. Again, the doctrine of the tree is a very large doctrine that includes within the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, right? So we could go to the doctrine of the Son and the doctrine of the Spirit and talk about as soon as you say they are God or they are divine, then you're making an affirmation about what essence they have. Like they're not made of something else, you know, they're not made at all. What they are is what God the Father is.

And this is not – so the understanding of divine, the kind of language that was used. There's the divine counsel. There's other spirit beings. You're saying once they're referred to as divine in the way that this eternal uncreated, self-existent Jewish understanding of who and what God is. That's what we mean by divine. And we see examples of this, like when Jesus says, before, Abraham was born, I am, referring to being the God who spoke in the flame, fire itself, in Exodus chapter 3, just going, whoa, wait a minute.

You're not just claiming to be a God amongst many. You're claiming to be the God. That carries with a certain kind of nature and essence of what it means to be God within their worldview, even though we don't have the words. Oh, they are one in essence, they're one in nature. is that I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm trying to articulate what I hear you saying. Yeah, I think that's right. And what I like about that approach is underlying all of this is a comprehensive understanding of what's going on in the New Testament. In the New Testament,

God doesn't just intervene to save us from this thing or that thing or the other thing. The New Testament is the story of the revelation and accomplishment of actual salvation. And the Christian notion of what the gospel is, is that it's reconciliation, its personal reconciliation, with God. That's not the kind of salvation that God can dispatch an agent to carry out, right? If salvation is what we think it is, if it's actually reconciliation with God, then only God can undertake the action of doing that. And so that means if the father sends the son, we can't treat them as just like the next Moses or a super angel or any kind of creature to whom this God-worthy salvation is delegated. Now, that's a stand back, you know, a hundred yards

from the Bible and look at it and say, I think I see the whole thing here. Like the entire picture here is this is what's at stake in salvation. I also like a good Bible fight, and I think that's a winnable fight. So here are a verse, there a verse, let me prove this part of it, let me prove that of it. I like that way of approaching it. But it's all based on a more holistic, fundamental understanding of what the gospel is. Okay, good stuff. Here's one.

I appreciate your willingness to take these tough ones. He says, question, is the affirmation of metaphysical, understanding of the identity of God required for salvation. Show a text. Now, I'm not going to require that you show a text necessarily for this, but the question is we have to affirm the metaphysical understanding of the identity of God. So not only that God is triune and that maintains the three-ness and the oneness, but we have to affirm that to be saved.

If I understand, hopefully, Thomas, I get your question correct. So does that make sense? Do we have to affirm that we understand the metaphysical unity and nature and understanding of three-ness of God to be saved? And if so, can you think of a text that would support that? Yeah. So let me kind of take that question apart just a little bit. Do it as much as you need to. Yeah.

A metaphysical understanding of God. If I say I believe in God, and I could be satisfied. If you say you believe in God, I can be satisfied with that. But then if I asked, do you think anything exists? Do you think there's such a thing as reality? And you say, no, there's no reality, but I believe in God. I said, well, I was initially satisfied with your claim to believe in God. But now that you don't think there's reality, I am no longer satisfied.

Like, you got yourself in trouble by having other commitments that surfaced. You know, it seemed like an orthodox statement to begin with. That's fair. One reason that this metaphysical thinking gets blamed on Greeks is the Greeks downstream from Plato, which means downstream from Socrates, had just a great intellectual. habit of asking what is questions, right? Oh, that person's brave. Really? What is courage? Well, it's, you know, when you stand up to somebody. No, that's an example of courage. What is the, what is courage? This is a what is the, what is courage? This is why he drove everyone crazy.

This is why they killed them, right? Just keeping up the what is question. What is courage? What actually is the isness that courage is? Well, that's saying is a lot, but you're getting metaphysical with it. At some point, you're saying there's, this has got some kind of immaterial substance to it. It's real. And so a metaphysical understanding of God, I think, is necessary in some sense if you raise the question and get into it, right? In one sense, Arias comes along, and he's the first guy to be really clear about the fact that he thinks the son is a different isness than what the father is. And you kind of move around and clarify, do you mean he's a distinct person? Because we all agree with that. No, I think he's a distinct substance.

I think the metaphysical substance that makes the son what he is is a different, lower, and created substance than God the Father has. Like, okay, well, now you've been crystal clear about it. You're crystal clear wrong. Like now we're going to, you've made a metaphysical heretical claim. We're going to make a metaphysical orthodox claim. But obviously, there are billions of Christians all around the world all through history who can't do metaphysics. And they're doing just fine. Okay.

So there has to be a certain level of metaphysical and. understanding in the sense that I believe God exists and God is. We might not call that metaphysics. We might not fully understand what it means for an immaterial being to exist. But there has to be a certain basis there. Part of the question is, do I have to metaphysically understand that God is three and one to be saved? And it seems to me, I don't know, maybe this is some level of speculation. Like, I don't know that somebody has to be able to articulate the Trinity to be saved, you could always think of like the thief in the cross, clearly didn't understand that. He's like the counter example for almost everything.

But could you deny the Trinity or proclaim doctrine that contradicts it seems very different to me to underdevelop and not have a full appreciation of than to affirm something that directly contradicts the character of God? So I'd be inclined to say that somebody could be saved without understanding the nuances and depths of the Trinity, but to deny it would tell me you're rejecting scripture as it is being revealed, and it'd be hard to say somebody could be saved and deny it unless they're like in process and open to learning what scripture is teaching. Am I nuanced this too much? Agree, disagree? What's your take on that? No, I think that's right.

And that's why I find it helpful does even say the word Trinity is commentary. So if someone says, what if I don't believe in the Trinity? Can I be saved? I would say, well, I don't know. I mean, this is a traditional word, and it's how we talk about it. Which element of the synthetic composition that is the doctrine of the Trinity, which contains multiple ideas within it, which element of it are you having a problem with? For instance, do you not think there's a God? Because that's going to be a problem. Oh, you do? Okay, well, fine. Do you not think Jesus is God? Because that would be a problem. Do you think Jesus simply is the Father? Because that would be a problem. Like, do you believe any of these things? And if you go around that circle a couple times, and paraphrase and approach each individual truth claim on its own, talk about biblical evidence for that truth claim, you get to the end and they say, but I still don't believe in the Trinity. You think, well, if all it is is the T word you're objecting to, that's weird. I think you're a weird person, but I don't think that's heretical, because you don't seem to deny the biblical teaching that grounds any of the elements that make up the composite doctrine of the Trinity. Our friends, we're here on Talbot Tuesday. I'm here with Fred Sanders, who's

a bio professor at Tori, and we're kind of reacting, responding to some live questions about the Trinity. And by the way, just for those listening, you have written on this a lot. Tell us one or two books that you've written. You did the one in the Holy Spirit or on the Trinity that people go, you know what? I like this guy, Fred. I want to read some stuff. Give a quick commercial in my request for your writings. Go. Yeah, well, if you like what Fred said about the Trinity, my stuff's all at Fred Fred Fred Fred.com. There's three Freds, Freds, Freddford.com. That's it. Oh, that's hilarious. The Trinity. So when I guess speaking to church and someone says, I haven't heard anyone talk quite that way about it before, where could I look for that? The answer is fredfredd-fred. Fred.com. It keeps being funny the first five or six times you say it.

So articles, books, links there for people to go further. Everything I can give away for free is free there. And then there's my books that are still in print. So my most important book on the Trinity at a not very high academic level is the deep things of God, how the Trinity changes everything. That's from the crossway. There's a second edition. There's also the short book on. on the Holy Spirit and introduction. Those are the biggest. I've also got a – yeah, those are the important ones on the Doctor of the Trinity. All right. Here's one. More academically, I'm not – Academically, I've got a big green book called the Triune God.

The Triune God academically. Okay, excellent. So here's one. I don't – sometimes when stuff is written, it's hard to know how much of it is sarcastic or critical. I don't know, but it's interesting. This is a comment written into YouTube. It says a seven-headed godhead would be – even better. Spring is one of the most meaningful seasons of the year. We celebrate the resurrection

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people back to faith. My opinion. Is any religion offering that now? Presumably not. I do think the Quranic version of oneness is easier to grasp for most people. Now, my suspicion is that this is a Muslim who's being critical and rejecting the Trinity because it just sounds so complex. We can't understand it. The Quran offers a simpler, easier position to grasp. So if God is three, and presumably we think three is

better than one, then wouldn't seven be better than three? What's your take when you hear an objection like this? Yeah, so that kind of objection put that way is clearly from the outside. Like it's when you don't understand the inner reasons for why something is there. And you're just sort of saying, well, if three is good, seven's better. You know, that's a, um, that person is sort of epistemically located outside the conversation he's trying to understand. And, you know, we don't, we don't do well with that. My doctor tells me stuff about my health. And I's like, I don't know. You're saying there's stuff inside of me. You know, I've got to understand some of the reasons. Um, um, you could though pursue this and say, well, let's, let's talk about that. You know,

there are 99 names of God in the Quran? Why isn't each of them somebody? Are any of them somebody? What about angels? Are any of them somebody? Are we dealing with personal realities in any of these cases? Well, now, in the Christian scriptures, are there any divine attributes or divine agents or things or persons coming out as from God that we think, I'm pretty sure that actually counts as somebody? You kind of start there and you realize, oh, well, now we have to actually scan available data. And this guy, Jesus, who turns out is the word incarnate, is someone we have to reckon with. I don't have to say grace comes from God as well. I wonder if grace is somebody. That's not, that doesn't make any sense to even raise that question. There just aren't that many

candidates for inclusion in the way God is present to us in Christian salvation. You end up with exactly three. That's a great take. So for me, why do I believe in three? Because I believe this is how God has revealed himself in the scriptures. Now, this is a Muslim, and they're arguing for the Quran, and I'm arguing the Bible's true, separate conversation we're not having here. So part of it is if the Bible's true, and I believe I can make that case, then the Trinity is a word we use to capture the character of God how he's revealed himself. Now, one way I think three is superior philosophically is there's a sense where at least if I love

if I'm loved by my very nature, there needs to be another that I love. It needs to be diversity built into the character of God, where a Muslim view of God, who is a single entity cannot love until Allah creates and then has a being to love, so it's arguably not the maximally great being. Now, how you get to three, there's a whole – Craig and I talked about this, this is indebted. I won't go into it here. But I think there's something that a second and a third add that four, five, and six don't add.

So I think we get there from scripture and they can get there outside of scripture. But rather than just kind of mocking and making fun and gone, well, seven is better. I think you're right. That reflects not understanding what Christians believe and why they really believe it. Okay. Here's one. This person wrote, again, word for word in commentary. are we to think of God as a soul with three minds?

I think this is maybe directed at Craig, so you can just give you your take on this. I know you say he's endowed with three centers of consciousness. Are those centers of self-consciousness minds? So maybe, Fred, you can't obviously speak for Dr. Craig in his model. But one of the things that people are debating on is that, like, did Jesus have two wills? How many wills are in the Godhead? Is there one will that's God? And then three, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now we have four. Is there the Father? And then the Holy Spirit has a will? But then Jesus has two. That's four. Like, it gets crazy to think about this. Yeah. And part of Craig's model is that there's one soul who is God in being, but three centers

of consciousness. Now, we are, we tend to associate a center of consciousness. with a soul because that's our experience. But God could be a more richly endowed soul that has three centers of consciousness. That's what I think this question is reflecting. Either commented on this or your take. What's your take on the multiple wills or the centers of consciousness in God to make sense of the fact that the Father is talking to the Holy Spirit or sending the Holy Spirit?

Like, how do we make sense that biblical data as you see it? Yeah. So when we talk about the father being a person and the son being a person and they're personally involved with each other, it's tempting once we've sort of grabbed that word. And we were trying to explain like, what's going on? The father sends the son and they're distinct, but they're one being, one essence. Once we come up with the word person to put on that, it's tempting to sort of free associate everything we know about every person we've ever met from observation and say that must be what is true of God. So when we say there's three of those in God, Then let's see, you're a person, I'm a person. Well, let's populate a list here of what makes me a person and you a person. And so that's dangerous because while there's some analogical connection between three persons in God and multiple persons in creation, it's not direct univocal language, right? The three persons of the Trinity are persons in a different way than created finite persons are persons. All right. For one thing, they are infinite.

For another thing, you can't have one without the other. like not even potentially you can't define a person of the trinity considered absolutely without reference to another person of the trinity anything if you try to ignore the son and the spirit and just say things about the father everything you say will only apply to the divine being the divine essence it's only when you ask how are the father and the son related that you can begin predicating relationally you can start making statements even the names father and son give to us in Scripture are relationally oriented, Father of the Son, Son of the Father. It's less clear in English with the Spirit, but Spirit or Breath of the Father.

Okay, so when you say you can't have one without the other, make it a distinguishing here. Because in our minds, we can go, oh, I can talk about the Holy Spirit without the others. I can talk about the Father without the Son. You're not saying in terms of understanding or logically, you're saying if God is this tripersonal being, One cannot and will not and does not exist apart distinct from the others. That's a met, not a logical, that's a metaphysical impossibility. Right. And so to talk about a center of consciousness, like their center of consciousness A,

and then what's the difference between that and center of consciousness B? Well, A is A and B is B. They're otherwise exactly similar, and they're both God. but since they are distinct centers of consciousness, then they are distinct persons. See, that's the hard edge of social trinitarianism. It's used as a way of distinguishing the two persons without mentioning their relations. But the Bible mentions their relations, leads with their relations. I believe in the Father, Son, and Spirit is a directly biblical statement.

I believe in three persons of the Trinity is a conceptual abstraction commentary to help us say what we mean a little bit better. But you can't route yourself out of the relations. The father-son relation is what's revealed. Okay. So do you have, if I'm understanding correctly, kind of a hybrid view that says they are distinct persons. There's a distinct center of consciousness. And so that's used to draw out the distinctions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to keep the try in Trinity. But we can't leave it at that.

there also are relational distinctions that are inherent to who and what God is, but without necessarily bringing in the subordination component of how that is usually cashed out. Help me kind of frame this a little bit. So if I could take a step back, we have the center of consciousness. There's threiness. But there's also the relationship, which implies others. you're saying both of those are essential to who and what God is and get at the threiness. Yes, yes, although traditionally we lead with the relation.

The only way you're going to be able to say anything that distinguishes the son from the father is to say how the son is related to the father. Sometimes we'll put this, traditional theology, we'll put this in terms of, well, there's a distinguishing mark that makes the son to son. It's like sonship. Okay, but that's kind of cheating, right? sonship means son of father. If you say sonship makes the son the son the son, what you mean is he's son of the father. You're cheating the relation back in. Well, that's actually what's revealed.

What's revealed is the relation of father and son. You don't have Trinity Person 1 and Trinity Person 2. And then, as a later logical move, say, gee, you know, it just occurred to me. I wonder how those two are related to each other. The relation was always primal in the revelation, because the relation is always primal in how there is distinction within the one God. Now, okay. Yeah.

Okay. So the reason that is traditional is because this is the revealed language and story we have in the Bible. And any doctrine of the character of God has to begin with revealed the father and the son relational language. So if we take a step back, God could have used any language to describe himself, presumably, but he chose father's son. language and that's inherently relational right and isn't so traditionally this isn't viewed as just well this is only in the incarnation they got is revealed us here this is telling us something about who god is inherently now what that is we've got to go answer further but traditionally you're telling me the doctrine trinity is relationally that is built into who god is

hence he's chosen to reveal himself in relational language. Yeah, God, he currently exists and reveals himself as father, son, and spirit. So it's a dangerous abstraction to start from what's revealed in Scripture and say, let me abstract from that some logical principles. For instance, there is one divine essence. There are three distinct persons. Those persons are centers of consciousness. That's how they're different.

They're distinct centers of consciousness. That's an abstraction, right? And if you then use that to judge the revelation, that's a problem. Everyone's trying to be biblical here, but there's a move to where you see the three, one thing in such a way that the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit to each other doesn't need to be mentioned at all. If you can do your Trinitarian theology and not talk about their relations, you're not doing it right. You've taken this side road through an abstract set of conceptions, and then you're kind of, someone who puts it together well, I remember one of the questions asked about Tom McCall's view.

Tom McCall's a systematic theologian at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, and he's written a couple of books on the Trinity, where he does a pretty good job of being sort of more, he wouldn't use the word classical. In the book, two views of the Trinity. He writes one of the four chapters. It's a little confusing, which he calls the relational and creedal view.

And you kind of see in that language, right? It's relational. The father loves the son, that's something Tom's really clear about. If you get to a point where you're so clear about the oneness of God that you can't say the father really loves the son, you've messed something up. And I would affirm that, right? We're trying to understand what's revealed.

And if anything you're revealed, we know the father loves the son. So he wants to affirm that, but he also calls it creedal because he wants to do it in a nicene way, affirming things like the eternal generation of the son from the father. So I see a comment here says the problem is they start from the premise the Bible is true. I would plead 100% guilty on that one. Now, this conversation, we're starting with the premise the Bible is true because we're trying to make some. sense of this doctrine. I don't assume the Bible's true. I can make a case for that, but that is definitely assumption here.

I would completely own that one, not pretending otherwise. Here's a question. I don't know. You'll go to this one. It says, why didn't God choose triplets or brothers rather than father and son? Any thoughts on why God wouldn't choose? Triplets would seem to apply more parity, and brothers seemly said, than father and son, so why wouldn't God choose that example?

Yeah, it's a good question. And at some point, you think, at what point will I lay my hand over my mouth and not say anything else about this? I wonder if you're going to say that. And you can imagine if you were making up how God should have revealed cool things. You could say, like three friends would have been better because then Jesus calls us friends and we would all get in on the friendship, and it would be a big, large, egalitarian opening up of a friendship circle.

Yeah, what's revealed is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And even to look at those terms and realize how much is in that self-naming of God, to realize that Father and Son necessarily require each other for their identity, Father of the Son, Son, of the Father. And you think, okay, I get it. You're doing family names to tell me about this ineffable, divine, eternal reality that's, you know, above where we are. Father, son, and then what?

What's the third family member? You start thinking, Other son? an uncle, like wife, mom, your grandson, you realize no other family word is going to work, and then you look at the revelation to say, right, father, son, and holy spirit, it's a very unusual name.

You know, it's not a family name for one thing. Like, okay, here's a pattern. Father and son, third thing is very different. It's not a clearly relational name. It's relational in the sense that spirit means breath, and so, you know, the son comes from the father by being sonned or affiliated or begotten. The spirit comes from the father by being breathed out,

coming forth from the father in this other way. That's not a family image, but it's some kind of, it's not my job to critique the name that the Holy Spirit gives himself, but it is neither a family name that we shouldn't tidily complete the triad, nor is it obviously a personal name. Like Spirit is kind of an impersonal image, right? And it's not a very distinct name for a person. All three persons of the Trinity are holy.

All three persons of the Trinity are spiritually. Hi, everyone. If you've been injured in an accident that was not your fault, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions for free. Call now and find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Call 800-712-2-2-3300. I'm here with spokesman John Wolfe. So, John, tell everyone listening who should call

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At what point do I put my hand over my mouth and not try to guess? Maybe a minute ago, right? No, no. My point was not that you did that. My point was to have certain caution. Greg Coker, friend, mentor mine, I know you know him. He says, whenever you ask you a question, why does God do this or why does he not do that, we actually don't know the answer unless God tells us.

At some point, we have to kind of guess. But it is so interesting that you're saying this relational component about how God revealed himself as father and son is built into who and what God is. But the Holy Spirit is not relational like the father and the son. Why or why not? You know, I don't know. I can't answer that. I wonder, you know, if God was triplets.

There's still different levels of authority. Well, which one was born first? I mean, I don't know that it would avoid some of the same problems that we have. You still have a God who is one in being, three persons, and there's no perfect analogy that captures this. They all err on some way. Now, that used to bother me in the past. I'm like, why, any analogy to understand this? And I think I've told you this with my students when I was teaching in high school.

school full time before I came here to biola I was like give me an analogy of trinity and one girl's like a peanut m&m she was so proud of herself she's like chocolate peanut and shell I was like we are comparing the infinite eternal god to a m&M I wonder if this whole exercise has gone south somewhere yeah and so it really doesn't bother me as much that we don't have a perfect analogy because this is god's character uh okay the other thing the triplets kind of of an intuition that's going on on the triplets question is if God intends to reveal threaness, then triplets would be a pretty good way of revealing that. But if God intends to reveal a relationship that is in the life of the living God, triplets aren't going to do it, right?

Because it leaves, it gets you this, in my mind, I picture three unmarked billiard balls, and you're wondering which one's the eight ball, right? Because all you know is that they're distinct. They're different centers of billiard. But that's not what God's in the business are revealing. It is interesting to think about. The father-son relation in the spirit. It's so fat, like Triplets gets the try. They share one family name. They share common blood.

Right? But can you sever some of those things and divorce the family? We don't need to take this illustration too much further down there. Yeah, I don't want to be the anti-T Trinity guy, obviously, but threiness is not the point. Right? When you hear the doctrine of the Trinity from the outside and think, like, Christians are weird. They're monotheists, but they're really obsessed. with three. It's hard to communicate this briefly, but we're not actually obsessed with three.

We're obsessed with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I'm well aware that I'm counting to three. I can count. I know how many... You don't teach math, but you got this. I know how many I just named, and I know I'd like to call them persons, because I can't just keep repeating the dominical phrase, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But the thing we're actually about is those three in their relations, not threiness in the abstract, and not just distinction in the abstract. Not distinction in the abstract. Okay. Good stuff. All right, friends, if you have questions here, Lodem. You know, here's interesting somebody who's throughout there. They said, what is the most common misunderstanding of the Trinity today? Do you have any sense of what you

think are some of the most common? And I guess we could say those outside of the fold. Like if I said, Muslims, what's their most common. If I said Latter-day Saints, if I said atheists, that might be different than the most common misinterpretation, and there's a lot. I just don't want to pick on those outside. There's a whole lot within the church itself. Do you have a sense of what the most common misunderstanding is from inside or outside, or what do you hear the most, given that you teach and write on this?

Yeah. Like from the inside, if you grow up in the church and are taught, the doctrine of the Trinity and you're reading the Bible, there can be a tendency to sort of back and forth between the one and the three because you can't quite capture it all. So the heretical versions of emphasizing one at the cost of three would be modalism. And that would be someone believes in God and then they say, well, and Jesus is God. And so I guess like sometimes God is the father and sometimes he's the son. And, you know, I teach college students who have their wits about them a little bit more.

I also teach the elementary school kids at church, and you know, you got a five-minute lesson with the first through the fifth graders, and you've got to say something they can understand. But if they sort of think something kind of modalistic, and I realize if I socratically cross-examined them, I could get them to commit rank modalistic heresy. Now, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to come at this questioning enterprise from another direction. But I do think that's one of the problems. And that's, so if a good evangelical Christian reading the Bible, going to church, is super convinced of the deity of Christ, but hasn't reflected on how that all goes together, they will tend towards modalism because they're just so sure Jesus is God, they don't yet have a developed doctrine of God, the Father. And they're kind of letting the Son do all the work that biblically you should think about the Father when you think of. Does that make sense?

Sometimes you hear someone say the gospel, like, Jesus loved us so much, he came to Earth, died for us, and lives inside of. of us. And I want to think, so that's true, but are you trying to avoid the Father and the Spirit? Because the full way to say that would be God so loved the world that he sent his son who died and sent the Holy Spirit to live within us. That's the full. We're kind of not disagreeing about the substance of the point, but so that's kind of an implicit modalism to reassign everything about salvation to the son who you're sure is God. Which probably is more of an inter-Christian thing to do. I pray to Jesus, and Jesus comes into my heart, and Jesus is the one who came and died in the cross because we're at Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, that's probably more of a mistake that

evangelicals make and don't have a robust Holy Spirit. You've written a book on that, by the way, robust few of the Father. So I think none of the sentences you just said are true. I wasn't track on all of them, but I think Jesus does all the things you're talking about, but not to the exclusion of the Father and Spirit. We could talk about why it's more directly appropriate to talk about the spirit in dwelling us. Why the Bible talks about that more than the few times that it does affirm that Christ lives in us. Galatius 2.20. So when we think of Christ having a body and ascending sends the Holy Spirit. So would you say Christ lives in us through the Holy Spirit? Yes. Okay. So that's where the language is because obviously his body is not inside of us,

but he does live in us. It's because the Spirit and the Son are one. So if the Spirit is the Spirit is inside of us. There's a sense you could say that Christ is inside of us, but there's still a distinction in their roles. Okay. All right. So this came up a few times in the comments. And here's one that was sent earlier. It says, and there's a few questions. We can you unpack this as you want to? It says, can you define the word God in the context of the Trinity? What does it mean? What does it not mean? It's like when you think of, well, God exists, are we thinking of the whole Trinity is God? Are we saying the Father exists?

We're saying the Son exists. The Holy Spirit exists. And what would that mean for like praying to God? Yeah, yeah. So I like the specificity of the question. Can you define the word God in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity? Because that's one particular context. You know, we got that word from the Bible.

And in the Bible, the word God means a lot of things, right? God is the God of God's. Well, that's the same word. So those are very different meanings of God, right? The word Theos God is applied to the Son in the New Testament, but it primarily picks out the father by appropriation. But in the doctrine of the Trinity, that specificity in the question is, oh, yeah, we're going to want to use the word God to specify the divine essence.

We mean it's the divine nature. Yeah, yeah. So it's not, it's... I use nature, essence, and substance interchangeably. You might have a philosophical reason to do otherwise, but I don't. I lump them. But that's not personal. Essence, nature, substance is not personal by its very nature.

And so when you're saying, God, you're referring to the divine essence, the divine nature, the substance. And that essence, for lack of a better word, exists in infuses three centers of consciousness, three persons. It's a mental abstraction where I talk about only the divine essence. without specifying the person. Now, the divine essence does not exist impersonally. There's no such thing as the impersonal divine essence of the Trinity. It is. The father is the essence.

The son is the essence. The spirit is the essence. There's the, yeah. Okay, so if I asked you who is God or what is God, you'd explain that differently if it was not phrased, what do we mean by God in the context of the Trinity? Yeah. And I think it's important to acknowledge that in the new text,

Testament, the word God is mostly going to be picking out the first person of the Trinity by appropriation. So did you have moments, Fred, you're like, I got it. And then it slips away because sometimes I feel that with the Trinity. I'm like, okay, it makes sense. And then I circle back. I'm like, okay, wait a minute. I got to think about this a little bit more. And I've made progress.

Like, and I get it. I don't think it's contradictory. I really don't when we look at what the scripture teaches. The moment I think I get it, then it like slips away. Is that just me or is tell me how you think of this? Because you've been studying and thinking about this a long time. Yeah, it's a weird sentence to say, I understand the Trinity. But the thing is, it's a doctrine, and a doctrine is something taught.

And that means that it must be possible to know what is being claimed and pass it on to the next generation. You know, the secret things belong to God, but the secret things of the God belong to the Lord. But the things revealed belong to us and to our children, right? That's Deuteronomy 25, 25? Or is it Leviticus? Ah, I always miss which book of Moses it is. So that means that there are secret things of God that we can't talk about because they are not made known to us. They're his.

But if he makes something known, then it's a doctrine. And the doctrine is understandable. Now, God is incomprehensible and mysterious and outstrips our understanding. But the doctrine has to be actually knowable and understandable and teachable. That's a really helpful distinction. So then tell me what the doctrine is. I did a little search here. I use Logos Bible software almost every day.

I have two sponsors for this channel. One is Talbot and Biola. And then second, Logos, I've used it for 30 years. So I just did a search. They have this feature where you can actually plug in and ask AI, but it limits it to my resources. I'm not pulling in stuff from online, whatever. I said, what is the Trinity?

It says the Trinity represents the central affirmation of Christian theology. One God existing simultaneously as three distinct purpose. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sharing a single divine essence. Now, as far as a definition, does that strike you as pretty solid? Yeah, it does. I want to go on, obviously, to say things about the relations, you know? Okay. That reference to the divine essence is kind of a tip of the hat to say,

we're kind of thinking about the Athanasian Creed here. If you read the Athanasian Creed, you can kind of die. diagram it has, there's the father is almighty, the son is almighty, and the spirit is almighty, but there aren't three almighties, there's one almighty. It gets in that incantatory kind of way of talking. So there's a three-one dynamic that the Athanasian creed really draws out really well. It's sort of background to the relation. I'm just going to just keep hitting that, right?

I want to know not just that there are three distinct persons, but I want to know their relation that the father, and it's built into the traditional language, the father is father of the son, and the son is son of the father. Okay, so I'm going to say this again. I want to make this distinction you said is important. There's an understanding of the doctrine and understanding God. So the doctrine has certain parameters about how God has revealed himself to us that we can sufficiently understand, but we won't, and we can pass it on to further generations. But the God behind that doctrine is a whole different question.

We can grow in that understanding. Yeah. I just got it. You could say, I know God, I understand the doctrine of the Trinity. I have knowledge by acquaintance of the one who is God. So I know God personally. I mean, this is John 17, that you may know the one true God. Or in Acts 17, the whole point is this is an unknown God.

And Paul is like, no, he's drawn near to you. You can know this God. So we can know God by acquaintance. We can know God personally. We can understand the doctrine of the Trinity. that's how you reframe it. Yeah. So I have a lot of sympathy for outsiders who hear that like, apparently Christians teach three is one and one is three. You know, that way of putting you think, yeah, it just sounds like a contradiction to me.

And you get the impression that Christians are saying, you know, God's a square circle, and we don't understand it, but if you don't believe it, you will go to hell. That's just how it is, square circle. Well, a square circle is not a coherent concept. I can't teach that God is a square circle and say, yeah, he exceeds our understanding. No, your sentence is bad. You just put the wrong adjective in front of the wrong noun. They actually, you cannot form a concept of what even is being claimed by a circle that has four corners or a square where every point on the circumference is equidistant from the center. That's not, that's just a trick you're doing with words. That's just rearranging adjectives and nouns that are incompatible. It's like saying, you know, chocolate up. Friends, make a comment. First off, if is helpful, give us a like, give us a thumbs up. Let us know if Talbot Tuesdays is helpful. I'm going to take some of the summer off, but we're willing to come back in the fall

if you want me to keep bringing on Talbot professors and talk about all this kind of stuff. I would love to know. I'm going to come back and look at these comments, what your big takeaway is. One of my takeaways, Fred, is you studied this your whole life. You have reminded me to be charitable to people

and their interpretations of the Trinity because this is difficult. I think two or three times, you're like, you know what, here's a charitable way of making sense of this passage. And if you've been told this about the Trinity, of course you're going to believe this. So that encourages me when I hear some silly thing about the Trinity rather than get angry at somebody or just think, what do you? Spring is full of special days. Easter, Mother's Day, graduation and Father's Day. And Crosswalk has made it easier than ever to find the perfect faith-filled gift for every one of

them. The Crosswalk's spring gift guide is your one-stop destination for meaningful gifts your loved ones will treasure from Bibles and devotionals to books that inspire. It's all right there at crosswalk.com. Visit crosswalk.com today and find a gift that speaks to the heart. Do it and try to correct them. Just think, I wonder where that person got that idea. And there's a decent chance that came from a well-meaning Christian. There's a decent chance it came from the church. And so we got to really fix things inside first and maybe even asking a question, say, you know, maybe you could tell me where did you get the idea that that's what the doctrine of the Trinity is. Would you be open to me explaining what I think the doctrine is? You can know God.

You can understand the doctrine and going back to what scripture says. So I love it. This has been so helpful. I could literally keep going forever on this, Fred. This is really helpful. We got a bunch of questions here, and there's some that we obviously miss. But again, friends, let us know if Talbot Tuesdays are helpful. We've got some world-class faculty here at Talb School Theology, Bio University,

in theology, and philosophy. We've been doing in science the last two or three months. If you're like, you know what these Tuesdays bring it on faculty like, this is helpful, make a comment, give a thumbs up, shoot me an email, and we'll keep doing this again in the fall. We'd love to have you here in our Apologetics program. we will look at, in part of our apologics program, we have Bible, we have theology, and we have apologetics. We've kind of done all of that in this conversation.

We've kind of blended it together. And so we'd love to have you study with us. And information on that is below. Fred, again, you have a book on the Holy Spirit. You and I had a full conversation about that earlier. Your big book is called The Triune God. That's the big one with Zonervin. Tell us one more time, the popular level book for somebody says, okay, I'm going to

I want to dive into this, read a book that'll help me, title one more time. The Deep Things of God, how the Trinity changes everything. The Deep Things of God, how the Trinity changes everything. I like that. All right, friends, also let us know if you want me to revisit the Trinity again, or there's some questions or topics or angles here that would be helpful, and we'll do it. Fred, this is a ton of fun, or maybe I should say Fred, Fred, Fred. This is a ton of fun.

Thanks for coming on in summer. I really enjoyed this. Thanks a lot. Good to see you, Sean. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much. much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian

faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. You know, everybody talks about life after death, but what about life during life? Hey, everybody, Greg Lorry here. And on the Greg Glory show, we're tackling life's biggest questions like, why am I here? What really matters? And what happens when I die? I'll discuss cultural topics with friends and experts and examine the the biblical truth behind everyday issues and even share stories about my own personal spiritual journey. Listen now to the Greg Lurie Show on lifeodio.com or wherever you get your podcast.