Truth Unites - Wes Huff Just Crushed It Explaining the Trinity

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Gavin Ortlund comments on the recent comments by Wes Huff about the Trinity on the Flagrant podcast.Original video: https://youtu.be/p58vknxGR4I?si=SepmtHiWGjfPthrhTruth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Wes Huff just went on the flagrant podcast. Everyone's talking about this, but I want to talk about it, too. I don't care if there's a zillion videos already. I got some things to say about this. Fascinating interview. All kinds of questions come up, you know? Who's going to hell? What about the conquest of Canaan? All kinds of questions about the Bible. Really tough questions. And Wes did an incredible job, and he also made the gospel message very clear. And the biblical answer is that there's no such thing as an innocent person. in that I deserve hell. Me, Wes Huff, I deserve hell 100% of the time. That's like the wages of sin is death.

And that's the language that Paul uses in that I'm like actively working at a job to earn a wage. And that's sin and death. Right. But the second part of that line is the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. So the answer to the question is that I think we are both. worse than we realize and have the potential to do much more good than we realize. However, I am not going to heaven because of anything I've done. Right? I can't do that. That's very clear scripturally. You cannot earn your way to heaven. It's not about doing things. It's not about

what I'm doing. It's about what Jesus did. In this video, I want to focus on comments that West made about the Trinity, which is the Christian conception of God as one being in three persons. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. He made two great points that I want to work through. Number one, the Trinity sets the Christian view of God apart from other religions like Islam. And number two, the Trinity is anticipated in the Old Testament, the earlier parts of the Bible. It's not just in the New Testament. It comes completely out of nowhere. Before I get into those, let me just share some general thoughts about this interview. I've been following Wes for a couple months now as he's sort of exploded, and I appreciate how God is using him. It was this interview, more than the

Billy Carson debate, more than the Joe Rogan interview, where I came to fully appreciate and understand more Wes's unique gifts and how they're well-suited in this format. It raised a lot of thoughts just about evangelism in the modern world right now that I want to share, because this is so important, and it makes me so excited to think about. I think all of us need to think about how do we advance the gospel right now. But West did such a good job in this interview, because on the one hand, there's so many different topics covered in relatively rapid succession. He's explaining things clearly and with illustrations. And he's has this ability to relate to people well in a very human way.

You know, he's entering into the culture and the jokes and so forth, but is also a time to try to keep it on track pretty well. But he did a good job just functioning. It's a lot harder than it looks to function in these different environments, answering questions on the spot. Very challenging. but this was a great model of effective Christian witness, because on the one hand, he's going deep on certain topics, but then he's able to step back and just make the gospel clear.

When I look at something like comparative religious studies, what I see is all of these systems of the survival of the fittest that I talked about before, Christianity is the fittest stepping down and sacrificing himself for the survival of the weakest. And that changes things in that mercy and justice are not pitted against each other. It's not justice at the expensive mercy. It's not mercy at the expense of justice. They're actually accomplished together in the act of the cross where the self-volunteering of Jesus going to the cross, right? He says, no one takes my life from me. I give it of my own accord. This is why forgiveness is an accomplishable goal, even for the most heinous act, because God has already taken on the punishment

for that heinous act that person committed. Now, when someone gets really popular, they also get a lot of attacks more. Not a Christian like West gets attacks not just from atheists, but also other Christians. And I don't want to make him above criticism, but I would just say some of the criticisms do feel a little nitpicky or unhelpful. I would say, remember a couple of things. Number one, doing interviews is a very particular kind of communication. You're responding on the spot. Number two, he's popularizing for a more general audience. He's speaking to people at their level. And number three, keep in mind the bigger picture here. You know, sometimes people, it feels like they're nitpicking at this little thing,

or I would have said this differently. I would have done that differently. But the bigger picture is the gospel is going out to so many people, and that is such an urgent need right now. There are so many people. There's so many people alive in the world today. I mean, we've got eight billion human beings walking around, you know. And people need the gospel.

These are momentous days. What was washing over me as I was watching this interview is, what a time it is to be alive. Just think about this. At the time of my recording this video, that interview has about one million views, a little over one million views on YouTube alone, not including other platforms, just YouTube alone after only two days. Lord willing, it'll stay up, keep getting more and more views over the weeks ahead and

on into the future. Compare that to the Billy Graham crusade in New York in 1957, which was the largest evangelistic campaign ever organized in New York City. Billy Graham and his team planned for it to be a six-week tour. As God was working, they extended it to be 16 weeks. This was a huge event. I mean, if you study evangelicalism in the 20th century, this is like a shaping event that affected our nation and the world so much. Tons of people became Christians. Guess what the average attendance was for any given event during that crusade. It was just under 18,000 people. Now, think about this. On the screen, look at the blue versus the red, and we can get some sense of comparison of these numbers between an average New York evangelistic crusade in 1957 versus this one interview after only two days on YouTube alone, not including other platforms and not including what it'll get after those first two days. Now, during all the crusades in 1957, New York, over those 16 weeks put together,

2.3 million people had attended one of them. Wes Huff's interview on Joe Rogan on YouTube alone has 6.6 million. So that one interview, just on YouTube, not including other platforms, three times the reach of all 16 weeks of the entire New York crusade in 1957. I'm not trying to put the flashlight too much just on West per se. But what I've been reflecting upon is the changing times and how we should think about that with evangelism. I don't have all the answers about this, of course. But the point is, to reach a large mass of people, you used to have to have a really loud voice

and some way to gather them. Then you used to need a microphone and an amphitheater. You don't need that any longer. What a time to be alive. Now, and I know that watching on a screen is not the same as being there in person, and I know the dangers and temptations of social media, in particular, believing,

I think about that all the time. I'm very sober about these devices as well. I'm kind of like concerned about it. the effect they're having. But we have an incredible opportunity to spread the gospel to a new generation of people who need it. And this is really worth us thinking about. This is the great passion of my life now, is I want to try to give myself to promotion of Christianity. Even when I'm talking about internal issues in the church like triageing doctrines, that's the larger end is I want the gospel to go forward and we all got to play our part. And so I guess what's on my heart here is if you have something to

disagree with or critique, fine. But from my perspective, the main need is let's come together. You know, pray for Wes, pray for God to bless him and sustain him, pray for many more people that God would raise up, and let's come together to get the gospel message out there because the mission is so important right now. And there's a real openness. Now, if you want to see that there's a sense of openness right now, go read the comments on this video. Let me just read the first four comments I read other than Wes's own comment and ask you, what do these reveal about the times in which we live? You can see him on the screen here. Is it just me, one person writes, or is Christian discourse at a peak in the last six months in the mainstream?

Next comment, what an enormous shift in culture when comedians and podcasters want to talk to famous Christians as opposed to it being a niche thing? Now listen to this testimony. This person writes, I used to mock Christians in Jesus until one day, totally depressed, addicted to drugs, alcohol, Satanism, I got on my knees and yelled at God to help me. That's when Jesus entered my life. Somehow I knew he is real and that the Bible is truth, got baptized a month later, and boy, the life I am living now. Joy, freedom of all bondages. So much joy and meaning to live. Praise Jesus. Here's another person. The way the guest carried himself, very commendable.

Never angered and had total self-control over his emotions amid feelings, a great role model for all young men in this world. It's just so encouraging to think, you know, like that testimony of that person right there, God is working right now. God is drawing people to himself. We don't have to be perfect, but just let's, simple point, but I just, what's in my heart is, let's all gather together, you know, instead of nitpicking here or there, let's all gather together to get the gospel out there, and we all can do our different part. Most of us don't have Wes's gifts. I don't. I can't go into a context like that and do what he did, but I'm trying to do my own contribution. On YouTube, you know, have certain things I feel compelled to do and I'm trying to help, but also books. I feel compelled

to write books. I just signed a contract for two new books. I'm excited to share about down the road. But it's kind of an all-hands-on-deck moment. Let's get the gospel message out there. And let's let that be the main thing to focus on, right? It's like it's exciting to see the gospel being shared with this many people. So way to go, Wes. Pray for Wes. Pray for more people that God raises up and so forth. Now, let's talk about the Trinity. West may two comments about the Trinity. The first thing he said that I think is worth reflecting upon is how the Trinity, the Christian view of God, gives you a totally different vision of reality than other religions like Islam. God does not need to create, right? So God lives in a set of living,

loving relationships in the Trinity. He has existed eternally in relationship and in love. Yeah. That's what John says in First John. God is love. And so God does not need to create in order to experience anything. Creation is an outpouring of his love. Now this is different than say a unitarian monotheistic faith like Islam. In Islam in one sense philosophically, God does need to create to experience love because love requires an object and a subject. And so in order to feel love, the unitarian God of something like Islam needs the subject, right, and the object in order to feel that. That's not true for Christianity because the Spirit and the Father, the Father has been loving the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit forever.

Yet, he chooses to create as an outpouring of his love, knowing full well that the creation will rebel against him because God loves us so much. I wonder if you've ever thought about this before. Think about this. It's fascinating. If God is Unitarian, that just means one point. person, one solitary person, as opposed to Trinitarian, three persons, then if there's a unitarian God, isn't there some sense in which he is lonely prior to creation?

Here's how C.S. Lewis put it in mere Christianity. All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that God is love, but they seem not to notice that the words God is love have no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love. Whenever I talk about the Trinity, I always want to read the old deologians to make sure I'm not going off the rails, because it's really easy to fall into error. But this is a classical idea. Back in the 12th century, Richard of St. Victor said, if a multiplicity of persons is absent, there can be no place for charity love. That's the particular kind of love he's talking about in

that context of his work there. He's drawing from Anne Selma and Augustine and others. Think about this. This is so beautiful. In a Trinitarian vision, we can truly say that love is more real than time and space. I'm going to sneeze. More real than time and space. I edited it out so you won't hear my sneeze. Think of it like this. So time and space, they're accidental. You don't have to have time and space. But love is necessary because love is at the core of God who is necessary. Ultimate reality is personal. The father and the son. Now, now, by, by the By the way, when we talk about God's love, this is qualitatively different than what we experience as love. There's an analogical relationship here. We're not making a one-to-one connection. Nonetheless, we can follow the terms of scripture in speaking of the love between the father and the son.

Think about this. God the father and God the son love one another, and there has never been a time in which that has not been happening. I don't know why that thrills my heart so much. It's just enthralling to consider. What this means is the motive for creation is love and generosity. The reason you and I are here, the reason you exist, the reason the whole universe exists is an overflow of love, the desire to share that love with other creatures who are invited

into it. The more you think about it, the more the Christian vision of the Trinity is absolutely enthralling. It is essential to the Christian message. it demarcates the Christian message off from other religious messages. And if you want to explore this more, I recommend reading Augustine's on the Trinity, especially Book 15, the final book, where he argues that it is the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Godhead,

who can be especially designated as the love that exists between the Father and the Son, even though he says it's not the only, it's not only the Holy Spirit who can be spoken of as love, and he gets there from a very careful exe Jesus of 1 John 4, which says God is love, and he's drawing from a lot of other biblical texts. It's very rooted in scripture. And this becomes a common way to think about the Trinity and the Christian tradition. The son is associated with the speech or self-expression of the father, and the spirit is associated with the love that is shared mutually between the father and the son. And you can see this in Ansel, my favorite theologian. By the way, Another exciting thing is my book on Anselm is finally going to come out in paperback.

I got news from the publisher this past week. So over the next year or two, it'll be much cheaper. I worked really hard on that book if you're interested in it. Some of you have asked about this. It'll be out at some point, maybe a year from now or so. It won't be so expensive. But this is Anselm's idea as well. He talks about the Holy Spirit as capital L love.

And this is common in the tradition. Point is simply this for now. Much more to explore about that is that can't you feel in your heart? You know, there's a line in G.K. Chesterton where he talks about what's an enigma to the mind is comforting as wine to the heart. I'm kind of paraphrasing that and don't go off the rails with that. But the point is it's like, you know, you can't wrap your brain around this, but it is absolutely captivating. In a naturalistic worldview, love and reason are just survival mechanisms. Our animal ancestors found them useful to survive and pass on their genes, and that's why we feel

about them the way we do in a Trinitarian vision. Love and and reason are at the very foundation of reality, even if we need to be very careful about how we cash that out. Last thing, I thought Wes made a great point that the Trinity is anticipated in the Old Testament. Go baptize in the name on a mon Greek. It's a singular. And then he says, of the father's son, the Holy Spirit. So he says the singular name, but then he describes three persons. And so this is the question the early church is wrestling through when they say, okay, Jesus is given the honors the attributes the names of the deeds and the seat of God. It's an acronym, Hands. The Spirit is given the honors the attributes the names of the deeds and the seat of God.

And the Father is given the honors, the attributes, the names of the deeds, and the seat of God. There's only one God. How do we understand this? Now, the ancient Jews actually already had a concept of this in that they weren't Unitarian fully. Abraham dialogues with Yahweh. Eventually, Abraham leaves, and then in chapter 19, in Genesis 19, it has this really interesting passage where it says that Yahweh on earth reigns fire brimstone from Yahweh in heaven. Now, you only have one Yahweh. So what's going on there? Ancient Judaism, sometimes it's called the two powers in heaven. I don't love that kind of articulation, but in academia, that's what's called, that God is ruling and reigning in heaven and still has a presence on earth. That God is complex

within his unity, only one God, but there's something else going on there that maybe we don't fully understand, but then is teased out in its fullness in the New Testament. Now what I wanted to show and comment on here, you can watch the full inner review, which I'll link to see all of his comments, but I think it's helpful to tease out this idea that the Old Testament is not Unitarian. I think this causes a lot of people to stumble with the Trinity because they feel like they're reading about one God in the book of First Samuel or Ezra or whatever, and then they get to the Gospels and they're trying to make sense, and they feel like you've just taken a complete left turn. And the way that I would like to put this is this.

The Old Testament does not give you a full revelation of the Trinity. Certainly not. But you get something that the Trinity makes sense out of. Okay? There's this kind of intriguing suggestion that God is not unipersonal per se. It's not totally clear, but there's enough passages that start the ball rolling so that when the New Testament comes along, you can see a consistency, and you can see a kind of organic development and a greater clarity, greater revelation that shines a light backward,

it helps you understand all these passages. I've given a fuller case for this in my video responding to Michael Lofton about no salvation outside the church, which you can see. And I think Christians can disagree about some of the details. These passages are difficult. There's a lot, but just to say this much, there's a lot in the Old Testament that is puzzling if you're assuming God is one person. Wes mentions Genesis 19, and you know, here the Lord is raining down sulfur and fire from the Lord. How does the Lord rain down things from the Lord? It just seems odd. Then you get to Trinity and you say, ah, okay.

In my video, I talk about passages like Psalm 110. And you ask the question, who is David's Lord, to whom the Lord speaks? Yahweh and then Adonai. Or Psalm 45, where God is being addressed. And then it says, therefore God, your God. And so you ask, who is God's God? Or Zechariah 12, where God is speaking. and He speaks, and God is referenced as the one whom they have pierced.

So the Lord is the pierced one in Zechariah 1210. And there's so many other passages like this that are intriguing. They're not the Trinity. They're not clear, but they're telling you something that the Trinity then comes and makes more sense out of. The angel of the Lord being worshipped is another example of this fascinating. I'd like to do a fuller video on that sometime. You can see my response to Michael Lofton in the meantime.

But the thing to emphasize here is that it was not just Christians who read the Old Testament in a non-unitarian way. So Wes mentioned the two powers movement. And he's wisely cautioning against using those exact categories and terms. I sometimes hear Christians appropriating that language wholesale, which I think is problematic. The idea is not that this movement is totally correct. It just shows that it wasn't only Christians who read the Old Testament in a non-unitarian way. because the Two Powers Movement is an early Jewish movement regarded as heretical by other Jews that predates Jesus. According to Alan Siegel's great work on this, this is a pretty academic book.

So whenever I recommend a book, I try to give a fair warning. It's pretty dense, but it's fascinating. What he shows is that the Two Powers Movement predates Christianity, and that Christians were only one of several groups charged with this heretical belief in some kind of complementary divine figure, this divine angel or divine helper. And the point, without getting into all of that, the point here is just to show that exegesis of the Old Testament scriptures produced multiple groups that are detecting some kind of plurality to the divine nature. Christians were not the only ones who got to a non-unitarian conception of God from passages like Daniel 7 and many other passages, even if for the Christians it took the New Testament revelation to more exactly arrive upon the Trinity.

And the cash value of this is that the revelation of the Trinity has a progression throughout the Bible, but it also has consistency and harmony from the beginning to the end. And I think this whole matter of how the Bible is one united story and prophecy is fulfilled as you go is fascinating. And with Blaze Pascal, I think you can even make a fairly good abductive argument for the truth of Christianity from this basis. I have a whole video on that. If you're interesting, I want to do more work on that whenever I can get around to it. Two final challenges. If you're watching this video still and you're not a Christian, my encouragement is to read the Bible

and just get lost in the story and trace it out. Everyone that I know who reads the Bible finds it more bizarre and more fascinating than they expect it to be. It's a wondrous story. It's a great way to learn about Christianity. It's a great entry point. Just pick it up and start reading. And for those of us who are followers of Jesus, watching an interview like this with Wes, I think a great thing to pray for is and think about it is how do we come together and pray for a

greater hearing for the gospel in our time. That's what I want to give my life to. Will you join me in that? What better time to be alive than right now and just give ourselves to the cause of proclaiming this wondrously happy message. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. It's really true. Your sins can be forgiven and you can live forever in God.

What a thrilling thing to give our lives to promoting that message. All right, thanks for watching everybody. We'll see you in the next one.