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The Person and Work of Christ with Brandon Crowe

Life and Books and Everything — Clearly Reformed
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The Person and Work of Christ with Brandon Crowe

January 31, 2025
Life and Books and Everything
Life and Books and EverythingClearly Reformed

Kevin welcomes to the podcast Brandon Crowe, a native Alabamian, an SEC fan, a Teaching Elder in the PCA, and a professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. Believe it or not, there is only question about football, and it comes at the very end. The rest of the time is spent trying to explain things like the hypostatic union, the communication of properties, Christ’s descent into hell, and how the Son of God could be ignorant of the time of his return. Lots of good theological exploration as Kevin talks to Brandon about his book The Lord Jesus Christ (Lexham Academic).

Chapters:

0:00 Sponsors & Intro

5:49 The Person and Work of Christ

12:53 The Descent Question

26:12 The Transformation Question

38:40 Sponsor Break

40:36 Some Definitions

44:19 4 Major Heresies

49:18 “An” vs. “In”

53:45 Christ’s Offices

1:00:16 Concluding Theses

1:04:31 Until Next Time…

Books & Everything:

ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible: Theology Rooted in the Word of God

Serious Joy Conference

The Pastor: His Call, Character, and Work

WTS | Master of Arts in Theological Studies

The Lord Jesus Christ: The Biblical Doctrine of the Person and Work of Christ

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Transcript

As always, we are grateful for our sponsors at LBE Crossway. I want to mention today their ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible. A newly expanded edition features study notes from the ESV Student Study Bible.
Over 400 in-text summaries, 25 articles, book introduction, sidebars, more.
The resource will help Christians better connect with what they believe about God, strengthening their confidence in the truth of God's Word. So pick up a copy of the ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible.
I know there's lots of study bibles out there. It really is helpful to, as part of your arsenal, to have one or two couple of good study bibles in this Systematic Theology Study Bible is a good one to get. Thank you to Crossway.
We're also grateful for Desiring God sponsoring LBE. I want to mention the 37th Annual Serious Joy Conference with Desiring God Gets underway the first week of February at Bethlehem College in Seminary. Lots of great breakout speakers.
And day one will be a plenary from John Piper on the goal of preaching the glory of God. I was at this conference just a couple of years ago. In 2023, it's well worth going to wear elsewhere.
What else would you want to be in February than in the Twin Cities in Minnesota? It will probably be sunny, cold, but hopefully sunny. You can learn more, register by going to Bethlehem College in Seminary to their website and look for a conference 2025. Greetings and salutations.
Welcome to Life and Books and everything. Kevin Deung, Senior Pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, just outside of Charlotte.
Glad to have you with us and excited to have our special guest and a great book to talk about today.
Brandon Crow is with us. Brandon is Professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
And I'm reading here the bio.
You're the book review editor now. Good. I should submit some book reviews to Westminster Theological Journal.
I love the journal. I have subscribed for many, many years. So grateful for that.
And Brandon as is MDiv from RTS Witch Campus. Orlando.
Well, they're among the top campuses.
That's true. And PhD from University of Edinburgh. I should know this.
Who was your supervisor?
So I studied under Paul Foster. And Larry Hurtado was my secondary supervisor. Okay.
I know of Larry. What was Paul's specialty? Gospels, some source criticism or community of Matthew, but he's done a commentary on Colossians and some non-canonical gospel stuff.
He was the editor of the expository Times, if you know that journal.
And I think he's still the book review editor there. So he's done a number of things.
So Brandon, give us a little bit of your background from Alabama to at some point Orlando to Edinburgh to Philly.
What other stops along the way? Tell us about your wife and kids and also a teaching elder in the PCA.
So they're all in, but make it more interesting. I think you just did it.
So I was actually born in Kentucky and then grew up in Alabama. I went to Samford University in Birmingham and studied history and classics there with the idea of going to seminary eventually.
And so when I was there, I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and went to Samford with that on my mind in terms of preaching, but then got involved at Briarwood when I was in Birmingham and became more and more reformed.
And by the time I was in seminary, so took a couple of years off after college and did some work and then went to RTS in Orlando.
Had a really helpful class with Sinclair Ferguson on church and sacraments my first year sort of helped me sign on the dotted line in terms of PCA. So I did that.
I didn't know the next step. I didn't know if I would go to pastoral ministry or what it would be, but ended up applying to PhD programs.
I did a PhD in Edinburgh New Testament.
Still didn't know what the future would hold from there, but the Lord opened a door to interview and come to Westminster.
And that was in 2009. And so I've been here at Westminster since 2009.
Wow, over 15 years now.
Yeah. And Mary with with four kids.
Okay, how old are your kids? And where's your wife from?
Yeah, my wife, her first name is Cheryl. I'll let you figure out the last name. So she got a fun name.
And she's from Alabama. Yeah. So she's from Alabama outside of Montgomery and or grew up in Montgomery.
Her parents live outside of Montgomery now.
And my kids are 17, 14, 12, and eight. It always changes.
Yeah.
So since you brought it up, what are the reactions when you say I'm married to Cheryl Crow? Well, you're recently a student at church. We were talking.
I said, Oh, yeah, I think I've heard of that person. Wasn't she big in the 70s? And so I'm not sure that it still has the same cultural currency that it once did.
That's true.
But certainly it was fun whenever we were dating, you know, and engaging and all that. She was more in the spotlight.
So you kind of had to know a little bit of your 90s history at this point, but I think she's still famous.
Yeah, yeah, it is history by now.
We are going to talk about Brandon's written a number of books, but today we're going to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, the biblical doctrine of the person and work of Christ. It came out maybe the end of 2023 little over a year ago.
Not that you need my congratulations, but this is really well done, Brandon. And even the physical matter of the book.
I do most of myself with Crossway who always does a great job.
Lexum, this is really nice. It feels sturdy. It's a nice type.
It's just a sort of book, you think.
This is good, good truth in here. And this book is going to last.
So well done to you to Lexum. And it's really clearly laid out. What is the, what was the genesis of this?
So is this, is this your Christology class? How did this book come about? And how did you write it? So I was approached by the editors of the series.
So guys from Australia, Murray Smith and John McLean, which is one of the great names in theology, John McLean.
But they asked me at one of the IBR. This is Institute for Biblical Research.
There's a dessert. I believe we were in Denver. And they approached me and asked me if I would want to write a topic, another topic actually.
And I was, you know, I don't know, it's a systematics book, basically, but they wanted a mixture of biblical studies, specialists and system petitions to write because the book bridges both biblical theology and systematic theology.
And so I was, you know, on the fence. And then they came back later and asked me about Christology.
And I said, well, probably not. That seems too big. And so we kept talking about it.
And eventually, eventually I said, yes.
And so they really take a lot, deserve a lot of the credit. So thank you for your kind words.
And the series as a whole is laid out really well by the editors. And they've mapped this series out.
It's a series on the Nicene Creed, we believe.
So going through the Nicene Creed. And as a whole, they mapped out what, by the time you get from volume one to the end, all of these standard, confessional statements will have been covered. All of these texts will have been covered.
All of these topics will have been covered.
So it's really a series. It's really a series as a whole.
And so they gave the basic outline of the book and I was tweaking it as I wrote it. But the genesis of it, in terms of me writing it, is I had done some work on Christology.
My dissertation or thesis, as I call them overseas, was a little bit related to Christology.
It was more biblical studies and a diachronic study of sonship.
And I had done some work in the gospels and so forth. But it didn't really come out of a class.
It came sort of a groundswell of things that I had been working on. And certainly had to uncover some new stones and revisit some things and learn some new things.
But it was a privilege to write the book.
I learned a ton. And I'm hopeful that it would be useful for people understanding that the audience is more or less, it's a beginning or intermediate textbook. It's not an advanced textbook.
But those wanting to understand the biblical foundations for why we have the doctrines we have, wanting to connect the Old Testament text to the doctrines, but also trying to explain, here's what it is we believe about the hypostatic union. Here's the terminology. Here's why it matters.
Here's the errors to avoid and so forth.
Yeah, I would say it's a really nice intermediate textbook. I could definitely see assigning this in a seminary class.
Maybe you also cut your teeth on that old IVP contours of theology series with the black covers.
And I forget who did. There was the work of Christ and the person of Christ.
I think Donald McLean did the person of Christ.
And then Steven Wellam, you mentioned him, he's got a nice standalone volume on Christology. But this really is well done.
And what's really impressive, Brandon, you're a New Testament prof and there's good biblical studies. But you've done a lot of, I love the way, you know, you just go through, especially with the church fathers and just showing that one chapter in particular about the deity of Christ. This was not something that just came up to the Council of Nicaea, but it's there pretty clearly.
And so you walk through, you do really good historical theology and systematic.
So it does, it bridges that. Did you feel like there was one area that you learned the most in or anything that setting out and now having written it was a surprise? Maybe a few things.
One is the chapter that you're referring to, I think, is chapter six or seven where I go through the pre Nicaea views on Christology.
And I just said, you know, there's a view out there and maybe the Da Vinci codes in the back of my head where they say this, they invented this at Nicaea. And just having read enough of the church fathers, they're just not what they thought.
And so I just went through and read as much as I could.
It's not exhaustive, but I read as much as I could and just try to show how extensive. And this is one of the things I found interesting, how extensive and clear it was that Jesus is divine and Jesus is human.
And it doesn't mean they have all of the eyes dotted and the teas crossed. And there's still things they have to fix and figure out and errors to avoid. But it is consistent.
It is in there in the Latin theology and the Greek theology. It's just consistent. And they're all talking the same language.
And we're not literally the same language, but they're on the same page. And you're starting with the rule of faith, which is something that looks like the Apostles Creed. This is where they start, that Jesus is the divine Son of God.
So I think that was illuminating. You know, one of the things that, the other thing, a couple of other things, trying to just put all the pieces together.
How would I articulate the hypostatic union? How would I explain these things for myself and for other people? Just trying to get all of this information that I've known and been exposed to.
But how do you simplify it and say, here's what they are. Here's why it matters. So that was really helpful for myself.
And maybe one other thing I'll throw out there is I cover the humiliation of Christ and the exaltation of Christ when I come to the work of Christ. And as a side note, this book is not just the person of Christ. It's person and work.
So that's not always combined. Sometimes it is.
And so when I come to the states of humiliation and exaltation, the editor at Electum was asking me to make sure I covered the descent of Christ.
And so that's where a place I had to start digging deeper and doing some research I had not done before to wrestle with. How do you cover that really difficult question about the descent of Christ? So that was, I think, illuminating for me as well. Just sort of confirm where I stand on that question.
Maybe we could talk about more of that if you'd like.
Yeah. Well, that was definitely one of my questions.
And since you brought it up, we'll go there. The descent.
This happens more Sundays than not when we have the apostles' creed descended into hell.
Someone will ask.
And I've taught on it from time to time. And I know some churches have taken it out.
Some churches will put a little asterisk
and say what they think it means. So there's really a series of questions. And you can try to hit as many of them as you can, Brandon.
You do a really good job of your book. And I think I basically land in the same place that you do. But the apostles' creed says Christ descended into hell.
There's the question, what does the Bible say?
What did the early church mean in affirming that? And then how have reformed theologians? Now, scripture is the norm. But those are three levels of questions to ask. So start with any one of those.
Early church reformers and then the exegesis itself on the descent.
I'll just take them in that order then. I think the early church believed in what we might call a geographical or local.
You had to put that in kind of quotes, the sense of Christ. So there's the argument that says, oh, this wasn't originally part of the apostles' creed and so later edition and so forth. And be that as it may.
We can talk about that. But the early church believed this. And so this is what makes some of the later discussions.
It's a little bit awkward because if the early church believed it, it goes way back. I mean, it goes way back in the leader of Sardis and Justin. And it goes way back in the second century.
And so regardless of when it appeared in what we might call the apostles' creed, it was there in the teaching of the early church.
So we need to just be aware of that. Now, what did the Reformed do? Well, the big name here is Calvin.
And Calvin reinterpreted this to put it in a simplified way and said,
this refers to the spiritual pains of hell that Christ experienced on the cross and is out of order in terms of the spiritual reality. And then the Reformed, one of the things about deleting this, if you're a Reformed Christian, it's in the confessional statements. I was a really good point you made.
It's in the Heidelberg, it's in the Westminster. You can't just jump over it. You got to take an exception if you're ordained or whatever it is.
And so you had to wrestle with it. And so basically it refers to a state rather than a place in the Reformed teaching. I think that's fair enough for a way to put it.
Feel free to jump in. But that goes back to scripture now.
So what if the early church was a hellish torment? That's the Heidelberg catechism.
Yeah, that it's the experience of God forsakenness on the cross. It's a little bit, you know, out of dead buried descended in that interpretation really he's experiencing the descent as it were kind of before dead and buried or it's all part of dead and buried. And yeah, so a theological interpretation, which you're saying is probably, you know, maybe the early church, you know, they understood that was an aspect, but that's not really what they meant by saying Christ descended fair.
Yeah, that's right. I think as a general rule what they're talking about Christ liberating. He's going to liberate people, that sort of thing.
So there's an actual descent of Christ local or geographical descent.
So again, Melito, Justin, but this brings us back to the first question or the primary question, which is what does scripture say? And this is where I've just not been convinced of the scriptural arguments for it. You know, there's been recent work on this and it's been, people are now talking in evangelical circles more about this these days, I think, than they have in the past in terms of what does, what do we do with the descent in light of the history of interpretation where they believe that happened.
But you know, it's interesting. This doesn't solve it, but it's interesting that Justin gives exegetical warrant from a spurious part of Jeremiah.
And if you look at things like the sign of Jonah is the sign of Jonah, the descent of Christ, I think in the Bible, the sign of Jonah is the resurrection because it's a sign of it's a sign to the generation.
If you look at Ephesians 4, he descended to the lower parts of the earth. That's a tough one. It could mean something like that, but it could just mean in Greek we call it a position where the lower parts are the earth, where the Greek phrase is referred to the same thing.
Sometimes Romans 10 is used, which is he descended, is also he who ascended. But I don't think it has to mean what the descent clause is taken to mean if we mean a geographical descent. And so maybe Revelation 1, the keys of death and Hades, but I just don't think there's enough there.
Scriptures got to be the norming norm. And I know it's ancient. I know the Reformation views are a little bit awkward in light of the early church, but I just haven't seen the scriptural foundation for it.
And some of them, the more contemporary arguments, if you look at, I looked a lot at Amanda's Palanis on this, and he has a lot of helpful interaction with views that are still out there today. And I'm working this by his line of argument. So one passage you didn't mention, which is the one I usually get asked.
And you do deal with it extensively in the book. It was 1 Peter 3. So how do you explain?
Because on the face of it, that seems to, oh Christ, he preached to the spirits in prison. So he died.
He went to someplace called hell.
There were some people in limbo even, and he preached to them in the harrowing of hell. He set them free.
Why is there a better way to interpret?
Or what is the better way to interpret 1 Peter 3? Well, typically people aren't referred to as spirits. You have Hebrews as a Hebrews 11, 12. That's an exception, but typically spirits are angels.
So my view on that is, I think he's referring to Christ's superiority over the angelic realm in the resurrection. And he went in the spirit. And so you have a couple of views there.
You have a traditional view that says this is referring to the preaching during the days of Noah.
And that's a possible, Noah's in the context. You have 1 Peter mentioning the spirit of Christ in 1 Peter 1, 10 to 12 in the Old Testament.
Bobing says he can't mean that because it says he went in the spirit, and preached. And so I think it's more of a redemptive historical advancement in 1 Peter 3, 18 to 22. And I think it's about the resurrection of Christ.
It raises questions about spirits and so forth, but we don't have to embrace all of what a text like 1 Enoch might say to affirm that the Bible teaches spirits in prison.
Second Peter in Jude, for example. We don't know all the details about this.
It's mysterious. But there is biblical teaching that says spirits are those in prison.
And I think that's a helpful way to view it.
And in terms of the idea that Jesus is liberating people, what's interesting, if you read the Reformed on this, one of the hallmarks of Reformed theology is the unity of eternal life across the testament.
And the notion that those who died in faith, they died and they received eternal life. And so you've got some questions, Hebrews 11 talks about those who are not made perfect apart from us.
So you've got some questions about that, that linger. This is really mysterious stuff here. But I think we want to affirm the unity of the experience of the afterlife across the testaments in the way that, for example, turrets in some way might articulate.
Owen has a good quote that says, you know, I'm not going to get it right, but something to the effect of if they were living by faith, they receive, you know, they received the reward for their faith and faith must mean something in the Old Testament. So where was Christ after his death before his resurrection? So you have Jesus saying, Father, into your hand, I commit my spirit. And this, as a side note, people say paradise is part of the underworld.
But I think paradise in the New Testament seems to point to heaven. Second Corinthians 12. And that's Jesus quoting from Psalm 31 there.
And into your hands, I commit my spirit. And so the body of Jesus rested in the grave and his under the power of death for a time. And that he must have committed his soul to the Father until heaven.
Heaven. You know, sometimes, yeah. Yeah, no, I agree.
And sometimes these, all of these very technical distinctions in Christology are necessary to answer the sort of questions that,
no, you can't use all the terminology with say a six year old. But these are questions that people ask. For example, I wrote an article just before Christmas on did the Son of God leave heaven in coming to be born on earth.
And we sometimes sing the hymn, and I made sure, well, actually the Trinity hymnal changes it, but thou just leave thy throne and thy kingly crown when thou came us to earth for me. So there's the Nicene Creed talks about he came down. There's lots of scriptural language about coming down.
So there is certainly a spatial kind of metaphor.
But how do we understand the Son of God being born and his relationship in heaven? Did the Son of, now, I wrote the article and said he didn't. So there's the answer, but unpack that for us and why that's important that we don't think of Christmas as the second person of the Trinity sort of packed his bags left heaven.
I'm leaving my throne room here. I'm going to be born in a manger. There's an element of truth there, and yet that's not how the best theologians would understand the incarnation.
What's that stake there and how do you parse that?
Yes. So we need nuance here, don't we? And this is where we need to understand Trinitarian doctrine to understand Christology. This Christology is not an isolated element of your theology.
It's very closely related, for instance, to Trinitarian theology. And so we need to understand the shorter catechism is helpful here. One God, same in substance, equal in power and glory.
I may not have quoted it right there, but Father, Son, and Spirit are equally God. And so God is omnipresent. And so as the second person of the Trinity, the Son is omnipresent.
And this is related to what we were just talking about, but he doesn't leave where he was, but he takes on a human nature in the incarnation.
And so the second person of the Trinity and the Son of God, eternal Son of God, remains what he was, which is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, but takes a human nature in the incarnation. And so he now takes on his humanity without ceasing to be the eternal Son of God.
And this is mind-blowing mysterious stuff here. I say stuff, theological truths.
But this is related to, maybe you're pointing this direction, it's a doctrine called the extra Calvinisticum or the extra carnum outside the flesh.
Extra Calvinisticum is probably a more of a pejorative term, as though from the Lutherans probably to say that the Calvinist made this up in relation to the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. But what does it teach? It teaches that Christ exists as Son of God apart from the flesh of his humanity. And so in that sense, he remains omnipresent, even as his body is limited, as we are limited as humans, he takes those properties in his humanity, but he does not cease to be the eternal Son of God.
And so what he does is he is not a human nature, is yet not circumscribed by that. That is, he, that's the extra. There is a life even beyond that localized life so that the Son of God didn't have to leave heaven in order to come to which again, we are getting, it's all mind-blowing.
You know, Turritin famously said, and Turritin is a pretty smart guy. You know, the two most difficult doctrines are the Trinity, the one God of three persons, and then Christ, the one person and the two natures.
And all of these terms, which can seem dizzying at first, are really to help safeguard.
All right, well, that still has to be true. And I think in particular with Christology, well-meaning church people sometimes think of the incarnation as a kind of transformation or that God changed in some way.
And there is a, I think you use the line, you know, something new was happening, but that's different than saying that God changed, that something new was by addition, not by subtraction.
So explain to us the importance there and understanding that God didn't change in coming to, because it could seem like, well, yeah, he became a man, right? He was transformed from God to now God man, but that's not the way the Nicene tradition or the Bible understands it. What's a better way? Yeah, so maybe we can talk about Philippians two here. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.
And once you start saying he emptied himself of something, you're starting to really get into a dangerous spot there, because the Philippians two doesn't say he emptied himself of omniscience or of omnipotence or something like that.
It just says he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. And so this is where theologians have often said it's the emptying by the addition of a human nature or however you want to nuance that language of addition, but he takes a human nature.
He assumes a human nature without ceasing to be what he was.
So he remained eternal. I don't think I said it earlier, but immutable, unchangeable son of God.
And he takes a human nature and things are true. This is going to lead us to another topic if we want to talk about it.
Things are true of Christ in the incarnation by virtue of his human nature that would not be true of Christ without taking the incarnation into view.
So things like suffering, things like the death of Christ on the cross, hungering these sorts of things.
But there's no change in the essential being of the son of God. There's a change with respect that he takes on a human nature, but it's not a change properly speaking.
It's the addition of a human nature with respect to the economy of redemption or the outworking of redemption, but the son of God remains immutable. So you talk also, and this is one of the perennial questions that every pastor will face at some point and you deal with it nicely in here. Okay, that sounds good.
That makes sense. But aren't there texts that say Jesus didn't know something and he didn't only the father knew?
So how do we explain if the son of God did not empty himself of any divine attribute because the doctrine of simplicity reminds us, you know, you're not a bundle of attributes. You can't just divest yourself.
And you know what? I just have 15 of 18 attributes today. It doesn't work like that. Okay, people are tracking.
But then how would you understand and explain those passages where it seems like, but wait a second, Christ doesn't know everything. So I think that the best way to understand that in my view is to understand what we call the communication of properties, the communicatio idiomatum. And what that means is there are some things that are true of Christ by virtue of His divinity.
He's omnipotent. He's omniscient.
Divine qualities.
And there are some things that are true of Christ by virtue of His humanity. As I said just a moment ago about He hungered, He thirsted His ignorance of the future is another one of those.
And so at the same time, we're not dealing with two persons.
There's not a divine Christ and a human Christ that are separate persons in the incarnation.
So that means that what you can say of Christ, what you can say of one of the nature is you can say of the person of Christ. This is what we call the communicatio idiomatum.
And so you can say that Christ knows all things and Christ doesn't know all things depending on the nature that's in view.
So I think that's the best way. Another way to understand, I'll say more about it, but another way to understand it is could be a challenge to his disciples to say no one knows not even the son.
But I think if you look back to Athanasius, this is one of the issues in the Aryan controversy that the Aryans were saying, if Jesus doesn't know the future, He's not fully divine or something to that effect. And what we think that the best way to understand this is to say, well, because the Christ has two natures in the incarnation, the son doesn't know the future with respect to his human nature. But the son as son still knows the future because he's omniscient.
And so that's where you can predicate things of the person. There's one person in Christ because the nature is not, the human nature is not a separate person that does its own thing. It is personalized by virtue of the union with the Son of God in the hypostatic union.
So that's a lot of terms there, but that's a sort of way to get to it. Yeah. And, you know, absolutely right.
And I was going to ask you because it's such an important phrase. It's not something that, you know, lay people learn all the time.
But, but the good thing about it, I find a lot of people in our church, they do want to learn.
They are eager to learn.
And if you slow down, like this book does such a nice job and says, okay, communication of properties of property, what is proper to a nature. It helps people to at least have some kind of, and it's okay for all of us.
When we first learned this vocabulary, some of it is like learning a new language and you don't get it all right away. But this has served the church, you know, goes back at least to Cyril. It was very important to Calvin.
And it helps explain something like a hymn that probably everybody knows and can it be in the chorus is that thou my God should die for me. And some hymnals have changed it to that thou my Lord should die for me. So can we ought we to sing that God died for me or give us the nuance of what we should and shouldn't mean by a phrase like that? Well, yes, you can say that because Christ is because Christ is God.
So what you don't, but you want to avoid, I'm not sure exactly what errors you may have in view, but modalism for one. That says that God is father and he could father in one mode, son in one mode and spirit in another mode or time or temporal succession of persons. We're dealing with God as Trinity.
And so one of the problems you might be getting at here is to say that God generically died for me.
But we're speaking of the second person of the Trinity. It is he who takes a human nature.
It is he who on the one hand, all the external works of the Trinity are undivided.
That's a theological principle. But there are actions and sometimes a language of termination is used that terminates on particular persons of the Godhead.
So what's the son who dies on the cross? Who is God by virtue? He's son of God, but we're not talking about the father. That's patropassianism. Father suffering or the spirit on the cross.
We're talking about the son of God who died on the cross.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think we're right to say acts says references the blood of God.
Well, God doesn't have blood God as God.
But if we are referring to the second person of the Trinity as God in the incarnate state in which he continues, then yes, there was blood. He shed his blood.
That's in all of our language and hymns and faith. And so to sing, my God died for me as long as we don't mean the divine nature died for me. The Trinity died for me.
The various other heresies you. It's a precious truth. And I have referenced that Wesley him before with his mystery all the immortal dies.
That's, that's the mystery.
And I've referenced that and trying to explain before impassibility, which is the doctrine that God does not suffer. There's no mystery to say a passable God suffers.
That's what, that's what it does. That's what you would do. There's no mystery to say a mortal God dies.
No, the mystery in the incarnation is that the immortal one in taking on human nature died. The one who was incapable of suffering as God now as a man is able to suffer and die for us. And, and I like Brandon the way you explain the ignorance of Christ.
It's, it's, that's what stumps people. But sometimes you need to help people back up and say, well, let's make the question even harder because it's not just ignorance.
God doesn't learn things, but Christ had to learn things.
God doesn't get thirsty. God doesn't have to take a nap in the boat. So we're dealing not just with ignorance.
That's what stands out to people.
But we're, we're wrestling with how to speak of the one person in these two natures. I wonder how you responded this, Brandon.
Sometimes I've had people, you know, good Orthodox people who will respond to this kind of way of explaining it, which I agree with.
Sometimes partitive exegesis, you know, talking about the, the, the natures according to the natures will say, well, you make it sound like Christ had a toggle switch and he just sort of could, you know, toggle over to divine nature and then he toggles back to human nature. Explain why that sort of pejorative assessment is not what we're trying to communicate.
Yeah, well, I would say these things are mysterious. And when you get into the thinking or the Christ, we can't recover. Some of these things are not revealed to us entirely.
So, but we're dealing with with Christ.
He said it earlier as the God man. And so I think it goes back to the one person in the incarnation that they're not two different persons.
It's one person acting.
And it's some actions are more proper to one nature or the other, but it's the one person who acts nature. The principle is nature's don't act.
Persons act. And so Christ acts in the incarnation.
But you can see the sort of the combination of these things.
Jesus walking on the water. He walks on the water because he has feet and legs in his human body, but he walks on the water as the one who has authority over the water.
So these are the actions of the God man or he he heals a man by touching or speaking or whatever the case may be using a human voice or using a human hand, but acting as God.
So it's it's it's he's acting as the God man, one person, one person with two with two natures and it's not a toggle switch off and on. And there are other people who explained it had better than that. So if you have a better way of explaining it, that's good.
We're glad to have Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary as a sponsor for today's episode.
They have a confessional conference. That's what it's called.
New name the confessional conference. It's coming up March 11 through 13 in Greenville, South Carolina. If you've not been to Greenville, it is a lovely city.
There's a lot to do there. You should check it out.
There's a lot of different conferences out there, but this one you might think of as a spiritual retreat for your family.
It will be targeted to men in ministry. The theme will be to look at the confessional understanding of the pastor and yet it's not just for pastors.
Wives interested lay people, kids, speakers include Craig Troxel, John Tweedale, Jonathan Master, David Gilbert, Carlton Wind, Terry Johnson, Ian Hamilton, Jeff Stephenson, Ryan McGraw, lots of people coming last chance at early bird deadline is coming up the end of January.
Finally, we're grateful for Westminster Theological Seminary. Sponsoring LBE as they have for many years. Hope you enjoyed listening to Brandon as you're in the middle of this episode with Dr. Crow who teaches at Westminster.
You may be interested in their fully online program. You can get classes like Doctrine of God, Union with Christ with Sinclair Ferguson and each discipline covers different content and methodology, but all from scripture and all meant to strengthen you as a Christian. So look at their Master of Arts programs.
There are great options for those who are working full-time, whether you're pursuing full-time ministry or you just want to learn more about the Bible, you can go to wts.edu slash M-A-T-S.
Come back to some definitions. Maybe people have heard of the Hypostatic Union.
What is that? Give a definition for someone who's heard it and doesn't quite understand how to explain it.
So hypostatic means person. Wait, did I get that right? It changes over the... I should know that first.
It changes over the side.
It's a personal union. It's a personal union.
It's a personal union. So a union of what? Two natures in one person hypostatic. So the union of two natures in one person.
That means there's one person, Christ, one subject in the incarnation as what we've been talking about.
But there's a union, not a mixture, not a confusion, not a combination, but a union of two natures. That means the divine nature remains the divine nature and the human nature remains the human nature.
They're united in one person. There's not two persons that are united, nor is there a mixture of the natures, but they are united without being confused in one person. So you've already hit on some of those important distinctions.
This is from the Calcedonian definition, which brings in 451, a century and a half, or really since the beginning of wrestling with this.
And it's you point out several times, Brandon. It's not like it takes Calcedon to decide who Jesus is, but it's putting the language that has served the church.
And so the one key line is that the two natures undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation. How would you explain those and what is meant by that kind of language without confusion, without change, without division, without separation? So they're not separated. You don't have, they're united in one person.
So the personal union here is so important.
They're not mixed. There was an error called eutecianism that said that Jesus became this different thing.
Part God, part man, or something like that.
But that's a problem, you see, because we are regular people and we need somebody who's a person or a human to save us, somebody who shares our nature. And if Jesus has some sort of a super nature, then he is not one of us, but he shares our flesh and blood.
So we need somebody who shares our nature. And the way that the Heidelberg catechism puts this and the larger catechism is really helpful is the question, why does our Redeemer have to be God? And why does our Redeemer have to be man? So one of the things that this highlights is the divine nature remains the divine nature. So Jesus is the divine son of God who saves us.
But he's also got a nature like us apart from sin.
And so He is able in a pure, holy human nature to obey for us and to bear the penalty that we deserve. And so that maintaining the reality and the distinction between those two natures highlights for us.
One of the things that does highlights for us that our Redeemer must be God and our Redeemer must be man in one person. And those natures are not changed. God doesn't change, so His divine nature never changes.
And we need somebody with a nature like us to say this.
And as a side note, this is the Krita language and the Council of the Indian definition. This is articulating and defending the gospel.
And it's been said also that it's preserving mystery rather than trying to explain everything away, but preserving the reality of the gospel. No, it's well put. Give us a thumbnail sketch of these four major heresies that are that in successive steps in some ways, the four ecumenical councils.
Nicaea, Constantinople Ephesus, Calcedon are dealing with. So just walk us through Aryanism, docitism. So we'll do those two.
Okay. And then we'll get to the next two. So Aryanism teaches that Jesus is God in a different sense or not fully God or something like that.
And so we don't always know exactly what the the heretics taught because people didn't preserve their works in the same way. But the famous saying that Arias had is there was a time when the sun was not. And so if there's any time when the sun was not that he's not eternal, he's not, but that's a wrong view.
And so there may have been a view of gradations of theology, gradations of divine being in Arias' view. But what Aryanism gets wrong is that Jesus isn't fully divine. And so again, God is God and eternal, unchangeable.
How many out there? What am I missing from the short of catechism? Internal, unchangeable, and I'm missing the- Something else. Invisible. Yeah, lots of things.
There it is. Okay. So Father, Son, and Spirit are equally divine.
And that Aryanism gets that wrong. Dostatism would teach that Jesus only seemed to be fully human. But we must have, as I said earlier, a redeemer who is like us in every way apart from sin in order to save us.
Do you want to keep going? Apollinarianism? Is that next? Well, I was going to just give you eutachianism and esterionism. Okay. All right.
Eutachianism. This is where you have a sometimes called, I'll throw another Latin term, a turdium quid, a third thing, where Jesus' nature is not just like our nature because it's somehow infused with divinity. So you have a superhuman nature of some sort, a third thing.
But again, that mixes the natures. And Jesus must have a nature like us to save us. What was that? Eutachianism.
What was that? Esterianism. Esterianism. This is a big one.
Esterianism is something we need to keep an eye out for all of these today. But Esterianism is one that we want to keep an eye out for. That is to say, there are two persons in Christ.
There was a conjunction of nature, not a union of natures, perhaps Nesorius taught. So Nesorius taught that what it came out, the question was, is Mary the mother of God? Is she Theodicos? And the right answer is yes, because Jesus, this is getting at what we were talking earlier, Jesus is one person who has a human nature and a divine nature in the incarnation. And so since there's not two persons, we can't bifurcate and treat Jesus as though he's just a human person at some point and know that he's one divine person with two natures.
And what's next? No, that was good. There's more you could go to. That's very well put.
And sometimes if I'm in a Sunday school class or something, I'll put up on the board a very simple diagram of God, man. And Erianism is like a bridge that doesn't go quite all the way to God. Christ is not God in the same way the Father is.
Dostatism and species of that is like a bridge that doesn't, the person of Christ doesn't quite go all the way to humanity just appears to be. And then Eutichianism is like a bridge that doesn't quite touch either side because it's this third thing that's different than fully divine, fully human. And then the story and ism I say is like a bridge that doesn't quite meet in the middle that the two are separated and that's vastly simplifying.
But at least it helps me and I try to. It's a sort of thing that you might not teach a third grader, Eutichianism, but they can understand, oh, Jesus needs to put a hand on us both and needs to be fully God and fully man. And these various heresies, as you said earlier Brandon, part of what they do is they try to make sometimes too neat and too tidy things that scripture tells us in equal measure that we want to hold on to.
Before we come to the wrap up because you have seven thesis statements at the very end that I want you to just say a few words about. We've been talking about a lot of terms and some of these may be new for people. And here's two other terms which I bet most most everyone unless they've been to a really good seminary like RTS or Westminster would not know these but they're important.
Okay, so, Ann, Ann, hypostasia, and in, in hypostasia, and maybe you put your emphasis on a different syllable there but that's how I say them in my mind. Okay, so you said, you know, a hypothesis is the hypostatic is person, so the personal union got it. What are these two terms trying to safeguard as we think about the incarnation? Ann, Ann, and then Ian hypostasia.
So Ann is a negative and N is means in basically. So Ann hypostasia means the human nature of Christ has no personal existence outside of the incarnation, the union with the son of God. In hypostasia says that in the incarnation the human nature of Christ has a personal existence by virtue of the union with the son of God.
So what that is pointing us to is the importance of the incarnation is one thing it points to that in the incarnation we're dealing with with this new development in the history of redemption where the son of God takes a human nature. And in that human nature is not personal on its own but because it's united to the son of God, the human nature is personalized. And there's a, if I can just as a side note here, I'm not sure how many of your audience will read the book or pay attention to the footnotes but there is this great, maybe one of the best titles of any article.
I think it's called hypostasized in the Logos or something and it's an article on this and I think I gave it to one of my kids that you want to read this. But the point is the human nature of Christ is personal by virtue of the union of the son of God. We can talk about other reasons why that's important but we're not dealing with Christ using the human nature in an impersonal way or something like that in the incarnation but we're also not dealing with a human nature that is united to Christ apart from the incarnation.
So, and hypostasia and in hypostasia and may not be terms you need to use all the time but what they're pointing to I think is helpful. Yeah, I know I think they are very helpful. Less we have a a crass sort of understanding that the son of God in being born grab some some guy named Jesus somewhere.
It's like, okay, that's that's my human nature. I'm grabbing that. No, and hypostasis says no there this was in this wasn't someone else didn't go steal some guys human nature and take it.
And yet in hypostasia is telling us well yeah but it wasn't like God, you know, went to some divine closet. And it's like I think I'll take a human nature and just grabbed some human nature that had its own existence there is there's some place where nature's just float out know that in tells us know this the existence here is only found in its personalization in being joined to the logo. So I think of it as you know their their technical terms unfamiliar to many people.
And yet I think we can grasp what they're trying to guard against they're trying to say this was not some guy that became God. This is the divine son of God taking on a human nature and that human nature did not have some nature existence on its own. It became personalized in the union with the sun.
One of the things I I hadn't thought of it before and I'll definitely now use it when I teach Christology but I really like when you go through the three offices. You you point out how at the cross in the work of Christ in the Tony work of Christ. You see the climax really that the unveiling the revealing of all three offices.
And once you showed us like of course that's there but we tend to think so the three offices profit priest and king. We tend to think the atoning work that that's that's priestly work that's sacrifice got it. Explain to us where you also see on the cross the a full revelation of his prophetic office and his kingly office.
Yeah, you can see it a number of ways like in leading up to the cross you see the he's closed with a royal robe. They are mocking his kingship but it's true kingship the the title on the cross is King of the Jews. So you see the and you see in Jesus in Luke remember me when you come into your kingdom.
You see it in maybe in Mark when they asked to sit on his right and left when he comes into his kingdom and there you have somebody on his right and left on the cross. You also have like in Matthew three times they they mock his sonship and there's another royal dimension there. So in terms of profit hood you know that they they they say prophesy to us who who slapped you.
And so you have you have all three of these profit priest and king there at the cross and throughout the ministry of Jesus as well not just there but but in the events related to the cross. And those are just a few of the ways. Yeah, that was really good I was helped by that.
You said you did your your thesis on issues related to sonship. I'm curious if you have you know how do you relate that to I'm sure you know of these controversies and some of them originated in the Philadelphia area but the you know sonship curriculum sonship theology you you're an expert on sonship. Anything you want to say in your Christological biblical research that relates to that particular theological emphasis which I'll just you know put my cards on the table.
I think it's certainly true and helpful and can be presented in a lopsided way as well. Yeah, I think one of the things that was interesting to me that this that the sonship discussions were not on my radar when I was doing my PhD work and it's sort of as I was in the middle of it it's like oh I mean I would have this has implications and. But you know it's not a it's not an axe to grind or anything that I'm making a that I'm discussing really but one of the thing I found interesting was the correlation in scripture of sonship and obedience that that's the that's the crux of my thesis.
It's called the obedient son and what you have in scripture is on the one hand the covenant or sonship with Israel is it's a wonderful act of divine grace and law to call this people covenantally to for God to be their God to be that his his father in the Old Testament that's something that may not be obvious to everyone but father is actually a known title in for God in the Old Testament and I'm arguing it's one of the key themes of Deuteronomy or it's a major theme of Deuteronomy. But what you have alongside that that love of God for his people is the implicit call to be holy that you are sons of the Lord your God Deuteronomy 14 therefore you shall be holy. So there's this correlation and expectation that sons would be holy they would reflect God's character and the great tragedy of so much of Old Testament history is that God's son I reared you I taught you I raised you think Isaiah one Jose 11 and yet they went astray.
And so that was the problem that had to be rectified and the expectation is in the future that God's sons would be obedient would walk in his ways and so forth. So I do think we see a biblical theological theme there that that finds its its telos you might say not only Christ but also in his people walking according to God's commands and newness of life. So that was that's an interesting you know parallel conversation or maybe cross conversation to have but that was sort of I was working on that you know in Scotland and trying to find a dissertation topic you know to write on that that would be suitable you know how that goes maybe and so I just I thought that was a striking collocation of imagery there and so I do think it has implications for how it works out in our Christian life today.
Yeah that's really good you're right once you said it sonship is with Christ and with us is so often tied to obedience and not to get off track with the sonship course and the good that it's done and I think the emphasis there was to remind people God is your father you can please him you know that's something I've written about many times and I think it's or the gospel or the doctrine of adoption. So to enjoy sonship what it means you're not slaves your heirs your sons so all of that is good and whether fairly or not I think some of that emphasis has been has landed on people at times as a a less of an emphasis on therefore the need for obedience or a strong emphasis perhaps on the imperatives just you know your sanctification is getting used to your justification. So I'm not trying to adjudicate the particular course or the particular controversy except to say that your connection there is really important.
Absolutely we ought to embrace our identity as sons and daughters and that God is our father and he's pleased with us and one indispensable aspect of being a son or a daughter is that we love to obey God our father. So let's thank you for giving so much of your time Brandon. We've been talking about the Lord Jesus Christ the biblical doctor of the person or work of Christ by Lexum.
It's excellent. Here are your concluding seven theses. Number one son of God is eternally the son of God the second person of the Trinity.
Number two in the fullness of time the son of God took to himself a true body and a reasonable soul for us and for our salvation. Three the hypostatic union must be affirmed rightly though mystery will always remain for the gospel is good news about this son of God. Five all the scriptures cohere in and bear witness to Jesus himself.
Six church history and the great creeds and confessions of the church are not infallible but they are invaluable guides to understanding and articulating the biblical portrait of Christ seven Jesus the son of David is one savior for the whole world. Now your whole book is really about those and we've been talking about aspects of those for the last hour. Is there anything in those seven thesis statements that you particularly want to underscore or you think the church today particularly needs to remember? Yeah good question I you know one thing we haven't talked a lot about we've talked more about the son of God as eternally the son of God in the fullness of time he took a human nature hypostatic union we've been talked some about the gospel.
I've said a little bit less about the Old Testament and maybe I'll say something about the last three here that we haven't discussed much one is the Old Testament is a Christian book pointing ahead to the coming of Christ. And the way we connect those dots is sometimes easier than others. I think prophet priests and king is a I was taught this in seminary I found it very helpful and memorable it's a great way to connect the Old Testament to the New Testament.
And there's a we read the scriptures as pointing ahead to Christ but understand that in the right way. And yet there's these mysterious statements at the same time in the Old Testament and I go through some of them about mighty God. How do we understand that is it theophoric or is it more than that and Micah 5 to the one whose origins are from of old.
And so there's there's more to say in the book about the Old Testament and the first chapters on the Old Testament. But something else we haven't talked as much about is this series is designed to be biblical theological historical theological and systematic but also practical. And we're dealing here with the gospel and this is a message as son of David as son of Adam Jesus as a savior for the whole world.
And so as we're reading about these things this encourage ourselves with them to make this known and to tell people and maybe people watching this podcast this video will hear more about Christ and learn how great of a savior he is that he takes our sins away. That he is a perfect man but also truly God and he does what no one else can do. That is save us as God can save us and bear our penalty in obey in the way that is required.
And that's in many ways the core of the gospel that by turning from our sin and trusting in Christ we can be saved and have life in him. And the gospel is about our union with Christ and about having life in Christ. Amen.
No very well put. Thank you Brandon for coming on LBE the book the Lord Jesus Christ do check it out and Brandon's other things that he's written in.
You have a video channel as well.
Yes it's a clarity and brevity on YouTube and so I try to do like five minute videos something like that and I try not to take your name of your channel. So it's a little different there clarity and brevity they're short. No that's good I like clarity and brevity you know one of my sons he's 15 and his friend keep telling me like we're going to start a rival ministry called vaguely reformed.
And where I was like well that that's kind of out there in a lot of places already so we'll just stick with clearly reformed. Do you care I know you're from Alabama but you're in Philly now do you care about the Eagles you want them to win the Super Bowl. Yeah I'll pull for the Eagles I'm a college football man I'm an SEC man but NFL doesn't hold the same sort of interest for me but sure I'll pull for the Eagles.
They're a quarterback went to Alabama for a while. Oh yeah all right yeah we'll give you that. Brandon thanks for being on and to all of our listeners thanks for joining us life and books and everything in ministry of clearly reformed you can get episodes like this other resources that clearly reformed.
Until next time glorify God enjoy him forever and read a beautiful book.

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