Yes this is true!
What helped me is seeing in the Old Testament
God the Son = The Angel of The LORD / The Word of The LORD
God the Father = The Lord (YHWH)
God the Spirit = The Spirit of the Lord
Each one are called YHWH but are relationally distinct.
You can get the sense of the Trinity without formula.
Existentialist self-help bros need to moralize Christianity to feed the humble-god-complex of creating your own value hierarchy.
They have no category for letting God as an independent relational ontology revealed Himself in the person and work of Jesus.
So they tend to reject anything that sounds like saving faith.
Eventually people start making it all sound alike a Rube Goldberg machine with either God or Man on display and the other in the background.
Non-calvinists slip into talking about God as a passive allower, responder, to the point where agency sounds like a rube Goldberg machine set up from eternity past, waiting for you to trigger. They don’t try to sound this way. But they do to a calvinist.
Calvinists slip into the same problem. Evil as “Secondary causes” (poor language). Or faith as “instrument”. In their head they know what they mean. But they do not know what they sound like. They make human and angelic agency sound flat with mechanical metaphors.
In the end we are all compatablist of some flavor. We just judge each other’s math.
The only way to avoid this is to use ontological-relational language. It’s not about choices as actuators and causation chains.
It’s about adoption, reconciliation, salvation, love, mercy, grace, justice of our Lord, King, Father, Son and Spirt. Reign language. Family language. Relationship language. Organic language.
Koine Greek, which has a middle voice. It’s an “action inside the action of another.” Commands like “be saved” (Acts 2:40), “be transformed” (Rom 12:2), or “be reconciled” (2 Cor 5:20). They summon us to participate inside something God alone does. It’s not pure “I do it” or “it’s done to me.” It’s “I am summoned to act within what He is doing.”
our languages (including English) only hand us two basic categories for agency: active (“I chose God”) or passive (“God chose me”). That forces everything into a mechanical chain where someone (God or man) ends up sounding like either a self-saving hero or a passive robot.
It’s a dumb debate. It’s like trying to solve superpositions with 0s and 1s.
I agree, genuine love for Jesus goes a lot further playing metaphysics equation games.
The Trinity isn’t that hard. Neither is compatiblism. And sometimes you have to take someone’s word for it that God is not passive and you are not a robot.
🤣🤣🤣. Okay, hold on. There is a great lesson here.
1. You’re confusing two languages (koine Greek and Latin)
2. Two different alphabets
3. Two completely different words.
4. With completely different etymologies
5. Words that in the native tongue don’t really sound alike!
Oh man. This is an amazing self own.
Self-help extententialist bros been falling into this trap. To much looking at the mirror and gaslighting your fears away makes people do stupid things.
Don’t get wisdom from AI. It is just going to tell you smart you are.
It’s not truly the case. That’s not the meaning of the word.
Scholars aren’t sure what the etymology of this Greek word is. Because of that, baseless illustrations like this one tends to take over.
The actual word carries a word-sense of mild, soothing, self-controlled.
Let’s think carful about what the beatitudes are actually doing. Jesus is flipping wisdom on its head.
Ben Sira Yeshua gave 9 “blessed” that were logical. Jesus gives 9 that are paradoxical. He’s roasting wisdom people just like Jordan Peterson who try to moralize kingdom good news.
These are not “virtues” they are paradoxes that describe the breaking good news of the Kingdom. People are REALLY tempted to turn these into a list of virtues to have or do.
I disagree with @DrFrankTurek. This is not an important question. This is a dumb question!
Salvation is by Jesus alone as the object of faith. In other words, faith is not a qualitative/quantitative thing that you have or you don’t have. Everyone has plenty of “faith” in something or another. So even saying “faith alone” leads to dumb navel-gazing questions like “Do I have it? Do I have enough?”. Wrong question! The right question is what is the ultimate object of your faith? Jesus alone saves. Doesn’t matter how big or how small such a thing as faith or works seems or feels. What is your only hope in life and death? That question tells you where your faith is pointed.
Out of FAITH IN JESUS necessarily flows both qualitative works and faith. Qualitative faith is like assurance, conviction, confidence. Qualitative works is like obedience, discerned action, character.
You can have people who say they are “faith alone” then hammer people to doubt their salvation. Such people often have wires crossed on what our assurance really is in.
Thanks for asking me and not Grok 🤣. Do you have thoughts on this question?
Well said. Living as “Son’s of your Father in heaven” is a position of power, honor and justice over those who think they are over you but aren’t.
It completely rejects victimhood or abuse cycles. Reframes your authority and dignity that is anti-fragile and doesn’t buckle to playing evil games others are playing.
We have this in biblical linguistics! Old Koine Greek had a middle voice: action where the subject action is inside and action. Ancient Hebrew has a similar function with verb stems.
It allows for emergent, non-causative becoming . Not 'who caused it?' but 'it unfolds.' Modern language binary voices can't grasp that fluidity. We either say “I do it” or “it’s done to me”. As a result we can’t intuit anything else.
Philosophical prison between determinism and libertarian freedom is one example of language collapsing into its own binary.
It’s like a bit trying to express a cubit.
Hi friend. I love that you love Jesus!
I just saw something new in the Bible. In the Gospels you will never see Peter once talk about love. He never says that he loves Jesus. Never response with love when Jesus speaks of his love.
Peter is only boldness. I will not deny you. I will die for you!
Then the denial. Peter is broken. In John 21 Jesus after his resurrection meets Peter. Jesus asks him three times “do you love me?… do you love me?… do you love me?” Peter is grieved Jesus asked him a third time!
Finally Peter says it for the first time! “Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you”.
Peter finally said it!!!
“I love you Jesus.”
And when you get to Peter’s letter. 1 Peter, you see him a changed man. Love for Jesus is the foundation. He says people like you and me, “though you to not see him you love him”.
Have you ever noticed that Peter couldn't wrap his head around love?
Peter never gestures to love once. Not once across all four gospels. Not that he loves. Never says he is loved. Not toward anyone. No agape, no phileo, not just the absents of words, its like can't take the very concept of love. Jesus told him of his love for him, but he could never say it back.
Peter was the man of loyalty, action, water-walking faith, and full-tilt bravado. You are the Christ. I will never deny you. I will die with you.
Then John 21 told by the disciple Jesus loved.
The Resurrected Lord asks for something Peter has never given.
Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?
Finally the rock breaks open. You know all things. You know that I love you.
First. Time. Ever.
I don't think Jesus restored Peter, but transformed him. He's arriving somewhere he has never been.
1 Peter. The love language is everywhere. A man who never said it now assumes it's bedrock of every believer's life. Though you have not seen him, you love him.
He learned it the only way anyone does.
He was loved first. Loved to death and back again.
It's no small thing for a grown man to say: I love Jesus!
@TomHicks2LCF Nice! Packed with facts.
Christian’s are not the ones who are going to experience the epitomelogical crisis.
We’ve been ready for this for 2000 years.
Bring it on!