Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of Biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and welcome back to the conversation about the names of God.
Last week, I had really hoped to get to a few questions that I had about the name of Yahweh. But there ended up being so much to say about the names of God that, I figured I would instead push pause on the conversation, and resume again in a new episode, where I'd have a little bit more time. And because I did that, this week I have, well, more time, I have more time to talk about the name of Yahweh and there's one extra question I wasn't going to do last week, but now I will get to [00:01:00] do this week. But a big warning, I'm absolutely going to get into some head spinning details. So this episode is likely to be particularly heavy. And I hope not overly repetitive, but it likely will be a bit of that, because I know some of you are not going to be familiar with some of these things, and sometimes repetition is the heart of clarity. At least I think it can be. So apologies in advance for all of that. But it's not my fault that the church doesn't teach enough history or Trinitarian apologetics.
So, last week I promised to talk about whether or not the patriarchs knew the name of Yahweh, And also, why Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 have two different names for God right out of the gate. And we will get to those questions this week, along [00:02:00] with a few other bits of information about the name of Yahweh.
But before I do that, I want to get into this bonus question of sorts, which admittedly might end up taking over the entire episode. But that question is, is Jesus Yahweh? and by that I mean, when we see the name Yahweh, should we always think Jesus, or is Yahweh something like another name for the Trinity? Or, is Yahweh all three perSons of the Trinity, or really, is this even a good question to ask at all? I mean, of course we can ask the question, but is it sensible? Does it make sense to ask the question from within the context of the Bible?
And I really mean that, because remember, the biblical authors weren't thinking the [00:03:00] exact same things we think today. And the Bible doesn't have to answer the questions we have. And maybe the questions we want to ask don't make sense to ask the Bible because it's not trying to describe things in that way. Maybe we shouldn't map the fuller revelation onto the earlier revelation in this way.
I mean, it's not that the earlier revelation is wrong. It's kind of like math. I know, we all love math, don't we? We have someone like Isaac Newton, who did calculations about how things work in the world, and his calculations, they're not wrong. They actually work in practical situations. You can use his math, and it works. But, later scientists come along, and they discover that, while Newtonian physics isn't wrong, it's also not the whole picture. [00:04:00] And they don't try to shoehorn the new science into the old science, but the old science led to the new. And there's a sense of continuity there.
, of course, our doctrine should be based on what the Bible says. So, even though we don't see the word Trinity in the Bible, we ought to see how even our later philosophy has its origin in the text. So, to answer this question well, we want to ask not just about Jesus as Yahweh. But also the other two members of the Trinity, who is the father and who is the Son?
Now to some degree this isn't fully a biblical theology question. Well, it is a biblical theology question, but we can't entirely answer it using just biblical theology. So the Bible is here to reveal God, like that's its actual purpose, to reveal God. And [00:05:00] ,so in biblical theology, at least the type of biblical theology that I particularly like, we trace themes and patterns in scripture. And so if the Bible is revealing God, then that means that some of the biggest themes and patterns are the characteristics of God and the way God is portrayed in scripture.
So, because of that, it's absolutely fair to look at how God is spoken about in Scripture by different authors. And different authors can talk about the same theme in different ways. We don't need to expect different authors to say things in the same way, or even to understand things in the same way. This is because God reveals himself in history to real people in real time rather than just downloading all of this information into our brains.
I mean, the incarnation of God into creation [00:06:00] changed things in a big way. So it makes sense that maybe they didn't really talk about God in the same way in the New Testament as we see authors talk about him in the Old Testament. There's just a different understanding there, a fuller and more complete revelation in the New Testament. And, since we should expect to see different ways of talking about God, maybe it's not the case that we can even talk about Jesus as Yahweh in exactly the way we're asking here.
But, we do have that continuity from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And the New Testament is pretty clear that Jesus is the Creator, Jesus is the Logos, He was there at the beginning, and He is God. So it's not that I think that this question's outside the scope of biblical theology, because it isn't. But in order to answer it very well, we have to dip into systematic and historical theology. [00:07:00] We can't just answer the question with biblical theology because what we have to do is understand the Trinity in this and we didn't really articulate the Trinity fully until well after the New Testament.
We did this in response to heresies, basically. Until we had heresy crop up, we didn't need to articulate the Trinity. Anyway, we'll talk a little bit about heresy in this whole conversation as well. And I want to make a point here that when I use the word heresy, I'm not using it in the sense of it being an insult, right? Because a lot of people today will use the word heresy as a form of insult. And it's really not what I'm doing when I'm using the word heresy. Heresy, of course, has and is used to create borders to say who is in and who is out of the group. And that's really [00:08:00] just not what I'm trying to do here.
I'm just an individual who is looking at theological ideas. So I'm trying to use the term heresy in a technical sense. And while there have been many types of heresies declared in the history of the church, The ones that I am concerned about are the ones that developed in the early church specifically. And I do that because Christianity is defined in large part by following the early church's creeds. And the biggest concerns there are about the nature of God and especially Jesus.
So when I use the term heresy, I'm specifically talking about ways that people talk about Jesus that are heretical. That the early church deemed as heresy because it's really hard to talk about the Trinity. It's hard to understand the Trinity. But the early church gave us good guidelines in [00:09:00] declaring the types of heresies that it did. What those do is give us some boundaries in how we should talk about God.
So, anyway, in order to understand this question very well, we need to understand the nature of God to some degree, according to the way that the Church has described and defined that in the creeds and in the declarations of what is and is not a heresy. Now my point today isn't really to get into those intricacies and talk about the heresies of the Trinity, but we will be getting into an interesting aspect of Church history here in a bit that will involve some of that.
Okay, so the question of who Yahweh is, Yahweh is I Am. He's always existed. He's uncreated. And so every perSon of the Trinity is immortal, [00:10:00] eternal, and uncreated. And so every perSon of the Trinity has those qualities, and I'd suggest that these qualities are wrapped up in the very name of Yahweh, as the great I Am. Yahweh is also God's covenantal name. And all of the members of the Trinity are part of the fulfillment of the covenant.
So, these things seem to say that you can't separate any of them from the name of Yahweh. They are all Yahweh, but that doesn't mean the name Yahweh can be defined by any single one of them, or even the Trinity as a whole, and we'll kind of get to that because the name itself doesn't imply three people.
So, to some degree, We are up against that wall of reality of biblical theology, where taking a later understanding into an earlier time doesn't have to make sense. Of course, the original [00:11:00] audience didn't always know or understand God as three perSons. We see God gradually revealing himself in Scripture, and not just gradually revealing himself, but revealing himself in different ways, to the point that not everyone understood God the same way. This doesn't mean that God changed, it just means this is how revelation in real history works.
But, okay, so let's talk about the Trinity for a minute. This is an audio podcast, so even though this would be a lot easier to do visually, I'm still gonna go into this, and I'm going to describe a nice little diagram that helps us understand the Trinity, or at least helps us talk about it.
So, picture a triangle, and at the corners of the triangle you have got the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The lines that actually make up the [00:12:00] triangle, that meet in all of these corners, upon those lines are written the words, is not. So, the father is not the Son, the Son is not the spirit, the spirit is not the father.
So, there you have the outside of the triangle. The father, the Son, and the spirit, and none of them are each other. You can't say that the father was incarnate on earth. You can't say Jesus is the Holy Spirit who dwells inside us. All three are distinctive, and that's what the shape of the triangle describes.
But, in the middle of the triangle, you have the word God. And then you have lines going from each corner of the triangle towards the middle. And along these lines, it says, is. So, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is [00:13:00] God. Every member of the Trinity is God.
Now, this is just a diagram. It doesn't fully explain how this can be. It's just explaining the ways that you can talk about the Trinity without getting into heresy. Again, all three members of the Trinity are God, but they are not each other. They are separate from each other, and yet they are one God. They aren't aspects, they aren't emanations, they aren't variations on God, they are all one singular God, but they aren't each other.
So this has been described in many different ways throughout church history by different theologians. But, my point here is that all three members are God, and now my question is, could we put Yahweh in the middle of that, instead of the word God? Is Yahweh the same as how we're portraying [00:14:00] God in this idea?
So, remember, Yahweh is the Creator. Yahweh is God, as experienced and known to Moses, for instance. Did Moses only know one member of the Trinity? Or did he know God as a whole? Was Moses only talking to the Father, for instance? Because the Trinity is so hard to understand, I think a lot of us might default to thinking that this is what's going on with Moses.
I talked last week already about the angel of the Lord and how that might be a visible manifestation of Yahweh, and how that might be the manifestation of the Son in particular, or the pre incarnate Jesus. So if Jesus is the visible Yahweh, we then think, oh, the Yahweh that Moses is talking to in the sky that he can't see, that is the Father, the invisible Yahweh.
I think it [00:15:00] might be hard to see it any other way, but remember that the people of the Old Testament saw Yahweh as a unity. Just as we know God, the Trinity is a unity. Deuteronomy 6 4 says, The Lord our God, the Lord is one. , The word Lord there, is the word Yahweh.
So if Yahweh is one, then what are we talking about? Well, we would see that as the Trinity, wouldn't we? So the Trinity is Yahweh, and Yahweh is the Trinity, but the Trinity is not how the Old Testament authors would describe God. So, you see how difficult this gets to talk about.
Okay, so the members of the Trinity They are separate perSons. That means they are unique, even as they are one. So, in what ways are they unique? Well, it's easy to see Jesus in His uniqueness. [00:16:00] He is the one who was incarnated into creation. He is the Messiah. Okay? So, who is the Father? Well, we can see the Father because we see the Son. The Father sent Jesus. Jesus spoke to the Father. The Father becomes clear because the Son has revealed Him. We can also see the Spirit more clearly in relation to Jesus, because Jesus said he was going to send the Comforter.
So, this is actually really, really cool, isn't it? Jesus, as the full revelation of God, makes it easier to see the other two members of the Trinity from our perspective as Christians.
We already know that on some level, but seriously, how cool is that? But we can still have some questions here. Remember that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father. One of the things we can get confused [00:17:00] about is that the language of father and Son make it seem like the father existed before the Son, because that's how it works biologically for us humans in time.
But the father couldn't have been a father without the Son, and the father has never been without the Son. They don't exist within the confines of time, so the idea of beginning isn't really a thing here. So, rather than beginning and this kind of idea that the Father existed before the Son, what we have in the terms Father and Son are actually relational terms. They show the diversity and unique perSonhood within the Trinity.
The relative terms of Father, Son, and Spirit show the relationships within the Trinity itself. Now there are other absolute terms that we have for God. God is good. God is love. [00:18:00] God is sovereign. God is powerful. God is creator. And so, the Father is all of those things I just listed, Jesus is all of those things that I just listed, and the Spirit is all of those things I just listed as well, because they are all God.
They are all one God, one essence or substance. This is one way that the Trinity has been described in words, And the point there is that the word one in this case isn't just about being one in purpose, but it's again, an ontological term. It is who God is. When Deuteronomy says, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. It really means that in a plain way.
Okay. So we have both uniqueness and individuality as well as unity and sameness within the Trinity. Now, I could probably [00:19:00] just end this part of the conversation here and say that, yes, Jesus is Yahweh, yes, the Trinity is Yahweh, yes, each of the perSons of the Trinity is Yahweh, and I could just leave it at that.
But I feel like that's not very satisfying, because we can more easily see how the Father and the Son are Yahweh, but it's a lot harder to see how the Holy Spirit is Yahweh. Especially when you look at the passages I mentioned last week about the Spirit. And when you hear people talking about God or the Trinity, it's a lot harder for people to talk about the Spirit as a perSon, even though the Spirit is an equal member of the Trinity.
Last week I tried to give a little bit of a defense for seeing the Spirit in the Old Testament, even though it's hard to do, because they didn't have that full revelation of who God is. So, just like last week, I want to make sure this week I'm also looping in the Spirit. Because, it's [00:20:00] important. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, it's easier to see the Spirit in the sense being separate from Yahweh, because it uses these terms of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord. So, it kind of seems like we have that separation, that the Spirit and Yahweh aren't one, but the Spirit has to be an equal member of the Trinity. So, how do we get to that point?
this is where we are going to get into some fun things in church history. And we're going to talk about the filioque, which is something probably many of you don't know about. And that's unfortunate, because this is something we really ought to know about. Because this episode isn't entirely about this topic, we're only going to be able to do a surface level flyby. For those who don't know what this is, I want you to be familiar with it. And for those who already do know what about it, I [00:21:00] will also tell you where I stand in my opinion about it, at least where I stand at the moment.
All right, so what is this funny word, filioque? It is a Latin phrase that was added to the Nicene Creed in 589. Okay, but we need to back up to know a little bit of history about the Nicene Creed now. So the Nice Creed was originally written in 3 25. So towards the end of the Nicene Creed, it has the words and in the Holy Spirit. So we believe in the Holy Spirit. What it's doing is it's laying out the members of the Trinity and our belief in them
So in 3 81, the Nicene Creed was edited to say that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father. This addition comes directly from John chapter 15, verse 26, which says directly [00:22:00] that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
Okay, so we have the Nicene Creed that says we believe in the Holy Spirit. Then we have it edited to say that we believe in the Holy Spirit that proceeds from the Father. This is biblical language. In 589, it was edited again to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father And the Son. The addition of and the Son is the filioque, because that's how you say that in Latin.
Carey Griffel: So now the creed says we believe in the Holy Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son. So it took a little bit of time, but the Eastern Church rejected this, and the Western Church affirmed and reaffirmed it over time. And this was also a major part of the schism that happened in 10 54 between the Eastern Church and the Western Church.
Now, from a historical perspective, [00:23:00] there are several issues here. One of them is the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, which we need to talk about more in depth. But there's other issues related, like who can declare what is a heresy and what is the legitimacy of putting this into the Nicene creed to begin with.
This is also very connected to the authority of the Pope of Rome and what his status is and should be in the church. All right, now I'm not going to be talking too much about the split or about the Pope. That's not really our point here.
Our major point is, from whom does the Holy Spirit proceed? And what's the deal with that anyway? Why is that even here? Why does it matter? Does this particular point of doctrine of the Trinity have any real impact? And is it heretical to believe one thing or the other?
Again, I want to back up a little bit here because we're affirming that the Spirit did [00:24:00] not have a beginning. So again, why does this matter? What is the point? It's fair to ask that, but at the same time, it's really ironic to me because most Christians, maybe especially most evangelicals or Protestants, will say very firmly that to be a Christian means to affirm and understand and acknowledge the Trinity.
This is one of those points of Christianity many people agree with and will profess as incredibly important. And yet, here we are with such a very poor understanding of what the Trinity is and how we can talk about it, and how we can defend it. So it's a bit strange that so many of us really don't give this any thought. Because the Trinity is effectively defined by the Creed. So, if you want to understand the nature of God to the point that we can, well, we need to have an accurate Creed, right? [00:25:00] And yet, as important as we say an affirmation of the Trinity is, we then don't give any thoughts to whether or not the addition of the Filioque makes sense from scripture.
But this was a major point in the split between the East and the West. It's actually the East that declared the Filioque a heresy. And okay, I would argue that the addition of the Filioque actually doesn't help us to clarify the Trinity at all, and that should really be the point of the Creed, to help us delineate how we can talk about and understand God in the form of the Trinity and the different members of the Trinity and who they are. now I have a little bit more to say about that later when I give my opinion on this, but this little bit of history has had a massive impact on the Church at large.
so again, why does the Filioque matter? Well, as far as the Trinity and seeing God in the Old Testament goes, again, it's kind of [00:26:00] easy to see the Father and the Son, but it's much harder to place or explain the position of the Spirit in that relationship. So, the Father is called the Father for a reaSon. The Son is called the Son for a reaSon. The spirit has got to fit into the relationship of the Father and Son in some way. Right?
To understand this, we need to understand the objections of the Eastern Church. Well, the biggest point is that the filioque exceeds what the Bible says itself. John 1526 speaks only of the Spirit proceeding from the Father.
It says, quote, "when the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify of me."
So, Jesus is sending the Spirit, but makes the further distinction that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. [00:27:00]
Now, of course, the Eastern Church also objected to the Filioque because of church politics. It was added to the liturgy without an ecumenical council. The addition was there for quite a while already, actually, but not everybody was using it. Eventually, the Pope said, hey, we're officially adding this now. So, it was added to the liturgy that everyone was supposed to use, and it's at this point in all of this that the Filioque ended up wrapped up with the idea that the Pope has supreme or universal jurisdiction in order to make this decision. That wasn't the original motivation of the addition of the filioque back in 589.
It had nothing to do with the supremacy of Rome. The filioque was not added because the pope made it up. It Because he didn't, it was much earlier than that. But, eventually, the filioque and the [00:28:00] power and authority dynamic of the Pope versus the other bishops became so closely associated that it all led to this break between the East and the West.
Now, admittedly, this is a gross oversimplification of a lot of it. It's very complex with a lot of nuance. If I had a lot of time, I would go into a little bit more of this history, But that would sidetrack us from our conversation here. So suffice to say that the East charged the West with heresy and schism because of both the filioque and the authority of the papacy. Both of those things matter to them.
But our question here is, is it heretical to affirm the filioque? Well, we need to ask if there is a biblical basis for adding the filioque. To complicate things even more, there's not just one way to understand the filioque. One way is a potential [00:29:00] problem, and the other way is probably not a problem.
So, to analyze this, we need to understand the concept of double procession. This is how the Roman Catholic Church has traditionally put forth the idea. Double procession means that both the Father and the Son have eternally generated the Spirit. Again, we aren't talking about cause and origin in the sense of beginning or creation. I've been trying to avoid the words cause and origin because you shouldn't think the Spirit had a beginning any more than the Son had a beginning. This relationship of the perSons within the Trinity has always existed, just as God has always existed, but double procession of the Spirit means that the Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son, And this is what the Eastern Church objects to.
But the Western Church claims biblical basis for double [00:30:00] procession. So, how does it do that? Because, again, this is not just about the authority of the Pope. They really had a biblical basis to begin with. So, let's go back to John 15, 26, which says the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
Note, that the other thing that verse says is that Jesus sends the Spirit. And how could Jesus send the Spirit if the Spirit proceeds only from the Father? Well, you might already see how that might be the case, but let's continue here. In John 20, verse 22, we have Jesus breathing on the people and telling them that they can receive the Holy Spirit.
We also have places like Galatians 4 6, Romans 8 9, Philippians 119, which all talk about the Spirit of the Son, or Christ, or Jesus. So we see Jesus sending the [00:31:00] Spirit, so these passages seem to suggest that the Spirit also proceeds from the Son. And indeed, in many of the early Church Fathers, we can see this kind of language about the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
They do talk this way, but we need to remember there are multiple ways you can talk about this. And they don't all have to be ontological, meaning that the sending and the procession of the spirit don't have to be describing the same thing about who the spirit is.
Part of the Eastern Church's disagreement in this is that it doesn't make any sense for the Spirit to proceed from the Son, because that makes the Son also the Father. Again, as for why it matters at all, it kind of takes away from the identity of the Father is the major problem. We need to be able to see how Scripture is talking about the Father, because then we also understand [00:32:00] Jesus. If we muddy those waters, it's just not helpful.
And so you have here in John 15, A description of the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit all together in one place. There aren't many places where you see that happen very distinctly in scripture. You see it also at the baptism, for instance. The Spirit descends from heaven like a dove, suggesting he's coming from the Father, or at minimum coming from the heavens, I guess we could say, to rest on Jesus.
Okay, so before I get into what I think of all of this, I want to introduce the idea of The Monarchy of the Father, because I think this is exceptionally helpful in the discussion and can really, really clarify the essentials here. The Monarchy of the Father is a term that you're going to see in Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Church history. And this is the idea that the [00:33:00] Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone.
The word alone was added to the creed, not as an attempt to change the creed, but as but to clarify it and bring it back to the original intent. The monarchy of the Father keeps the identity of the Father as Father because both the Son and the Spirit are seen in relation to who the Father is. In the monarchy of the Father, we can see why the Son and Spirit are sent.
We can understand why Jesus is called the Son of God and why Jesus can say what he says about the Father. The Spirit is related to the Father this way, and the Spirit can still be related to the Son as well, as you'll see here in a little bit. Part of the problem with apologetics and theology is that you can have one concept, and it can breed a lot of really bad concepts from it if you don't understand it well enough.
This is why we have multiple [00:34:00] heresies in the early church. Because something would be described in a certain way, and then other people would run with it in a direction that you really can't go, because it goes against what we see in Scripture. That's what the definition of heresy should be. For instance, when you talk about the monarchy of the Father, and the Son and the Spirit coming from the Father, You might get the idea that there's a hierarchy in the Trinity, that the Father is above the Son and the Spirit.
And I mean, we can say that the Father sends out, the Father is the one who generates the Son and the Spirit. So there's a kind of hierarchy there, but not in the sense that we often think of it. Because we also say that the members of the Trinity are co equal. That means that none of the members are subordinate to the other ones. Subordination was declared a heresy. So, it's not that the spirit and the Son come from the father and the [00:35:00] father's greater than them, because that would make them not co equal.
But it's also important that we understand the father is, in some sense, the source. Why? Why is that important? Because otherwise he wouldn't be a father. He couldn't be described that way. And the way that we see Jesus engage with the Father in Scripture has to be explained in all of this.
Jesus is continually called the Son. He addresses God the Father. This can all be explained by saying that the Father is the one who sends out, the Father is the one who originates, that that's his very identity as his unique nature in the Trinity.
Okay, so maybe your head is spinning at this point, and I don't blame you. This is why I try very hard, usually, to keep to biblical terminology instead of getting into the nuance of the philosophy of the Trinity, because [00:36:00] inevitably, it kind of twists together at some point, because we just don't have the language to really clarify it.
We just don't, and this is why I also can't blame people for having a hard time with the Trinity. I can't blame people for falling into heresies. And when I say that there is a heretical idea, I'm not necessarily calling the perSon who is espousing the idea a heretic, even though they might be. Because heretic implies that you are outside the faith. And I just don't know that. I just don't know what somebody's relationship with God is. I'm not declaring that of people. So much of heresy we see is because of misunderstanding or disagreement on philosophy or interpretation or history and how we see the basis of the foundation of our faith.
But, this is also why it's important to talk about it in the way that the early church did. this is why [00:37:00] we can't just focus on the humanity or the divinity of Jesus. We have to bring forth both of those things whenever we're talking about it, because if we don't, we just can't be sure that we're not falling into heretical ideas as we continue our thinking. Yes, we can talk about Jesus's humanity. Yes, we can talk about Jesus's divinity, but we can't just talk about one without the other or at least acknowledge that yes, we believe in both. It's just very easy to risk oversimplification of these things and fall into really bad ways of describing them.
Okay, so where can we land in all of this? And again, the age old question of why does it matter? Well, I've already presented some of that, and we've demonstrated that Scripture says straight out that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. So that's where we can get the idea from to begin with, but we also see the [00:38:00] Spirit coming from the Son, or being associated with Jesus in ways, right?
So is it really all that wrong to say that the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son? Well, again, it depends on what we mean by that. I'm going to use another esoteric term from the halls of theology, and that is the word economy. For most of us, we hear the word economy, and we think about how our society uses money. We think about government and things like that. Well, here I'm using it theologically. We can talk about economy versus ontology. They're not really opposites, but they kind of pair together in a way.
If you've listened long enough, you've probably heard me use the word ontology more than once. And it's just a fancy way of saying what something is. The ontology of God is who He is. [00:39:00] So economy is a fancy way of saying how things are handled or managed, or how they actually play out. So the economy of God is about God's actions in the world.
Now here is where that matters. The ontology of God includes the Spirit proceeding from the Father. That's wrapped up in the identity of the Father and the Spirit. Their identity comes from who they are within the Trinity itself, and they can only be defined by their relationships with each other. Now, the economy of God includes Jesus sending the Spirit out, Because, that sending of the Spirit is about Jesus acting in the world. it's not about who the Spirit is, even though, as I said before, through Jesus we can see the Spirit more clearly.
Jesus sending out the Spirit [00:40:00] isn't about where the Spirit comes from in His identity. In other words, the Spirit's identity within the Trinity is not from Jesus sending him out. His identity comes from who he is in relation to the Father. That's why I made a point before that there are relative terms that talk about who the Father, Son, and Spirit are within the Trinity, and there are absolute terms that talk about who God as a whole is from outside the Trinity. We can see the different members of the Trinity and their attributes more clearly since Jesus came, because Jesus's coming revealed them more fully.
So in the end, I do think that adding the filioque muddied the waters for us because if the Creed is supposed to help guide us in knowing who the members of the Trinity are, then saying the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. It's not [00:41:00] clear. It doesn't really help to define the Spirit very well.
We can definitely say that the Spirit comes from Jesus in the practical sending out of the Spirit in the world. That's part of the work of Jesus, and why the Spirit can be said to be not just the Spirit of God, but also the Spirit of Christ. This is the economy of salvation. Which, again, that's just a fancy way of talking about the actual work of God in history.
I guess the question in the end is, does scripture really even say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father in this ontological way? Is that what John 15 is saying? You could suggest that the Bible isn't making that point. And fair enough, I guess. You could say that all of this later philosophy is just silly, and we should stick with how the Bible describes things.
I mean, I wish that could be the case, but it just really isn't. We do [00:42:00] need a way to understand the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, because the New Testament directly introduces them and separates them as well. It talks about Jesus having a Father and even having a God.
So how do we merge that with the knowledge of God as one, and Jesus as God? And how do we not regulate the Spirit into a second class member of the Trinity?
Before, I've said that I don't think that understanding the Trinity is a matter of salvation, because I don't think God requires us to have good philosophy in order to save us. The addition of the Filioque was a mistake in that it doesn't add anything to how we understand the Trinity itself, so I can't blame the Eastern Church for digging in its heels and telling the Western Church that it's wrong.
So it's sort of a heresy issue, even if it's not a salvation issue. I don't think the addition was helpful. And I'd [00:43:00] also frankly say that this became a political issue, maybe instigated primarily by the Pope, but maybe not. Because some of that was because the East specifically declared this as a status of heresy.
In the end, what it feels like is a battle of wits, where both sides have built up an immunity to Iocane powder, and they're just waiting for the other side to drop.
It's a bit ironic to me that most Protestants affirm the Filioque, which means they're siding with the Pope here. Of course, I don't think most of them realize how strongly this issue is tied to the historical rise of Rome's supremacy. Perhaps Protestants who affirm the Filioque are reading church fathers like Augustine, who didn't make up the argument, but he did write a lot about it.
All right, so anyway, that was a lot, and I promise I'm still going to get to my original [00:44:00] questions today, however long that's going to take this time, but those questions won't require answers that get quite so deeply into the weeds as we did here.
But to bring all of this back to the original question of Jesus as Yahweh, here's how we can potentially see that. Yahweh, as our one sovereign supreme creator, is at least in some way equivalent to how we understand the Trinity. He is our one God, our one Lord, our one Savior, but we can also understand Yahweh specifically as a name of God that He uses within the economy of salvation, meaning that the name Yahweh doesn't have to fully define God or the Trinity itself, but Yahweh is also how people experience God in history.
And that point will matter when we get into the question from Exodus about people [00:45:00] knowing the name of Yahweh.
Okay, that's enough from our bonus question today, which ended up being almost the entire episode itself. But like I said, I promised I'm going to get to these other questions, so let's get into those.
Alright, so there's already a lot of resources out there as to the meaning of Yahweh and the conversation about that and the pronunciation of Yahweh. So I don't wanna get too deep into the weeds with that. But I do want to read this quote by H. H. Rowley from the International Standard Biblical Encyclopedia. And he says, quote, Etymology is not finally important here for Old Testament theology, since not etymology, but experience filled the term with meaning, end quote.
So scholars generally agree that the name Yahweh is connected to the verb to be. They just aren't sure what form the [00:46:00] verb was, but it probably really doesn't actually matter. And I like this idea that it's the experience of people, and that's really what to be is about. Right? Like, the past experience, the current experience, the future experience, those are all wrapped up in who God is.
As for the pronunciation of Yahweh, we don't have direct information from Hebrew, because they had started to stop pronouncing the name before we got the vowel points in words. But, we do have Greek transliterations of the name that come after Jesus and those suggest that Yahweh is the closest pronunciation that we have. If you want more on that, there are so many videos on YouTube so just go do a search on that.
But another interesting question is, was Yahweh the [00:47:00] original, or was Yah the original? Because we don't always just see Yahweh, sometimes we see Yah. And we see it in words like Hallelujah, right? And we see Yahu or Yo that are used in perSonal names. So we might wonder if Yah was the original term, And Yahweh came from Yah. But most scholars agree that it's probably not the original, but a diminutive form. It's a shorter form that they would use for worship, or for names, or, you know, to avoid the complete name of the word Yahweh.
Okay, next question about the word Yahweh is, when did it become Jehovah? Why is Jehovah a thing? Because Jehovah doesn't sound like Yahweh. So, why aren't I using the name Jehovah? Well, the name Jehovah came about [00:48:00] because by the time of the English translations of the Bible, like the Geneva Bible, the King James Version, all of that, we did have the vowel points in Hebrew.
If you're not familiar with the transmission of the Hebrew text, Hebrew was not originally written with vowels. If you were a fluent speaker in Hebrew, you didn't really need those vowels. But later on, when people were no longer fluent Hebrew speakers, they needed some little hints as to how you pronounce certain words. What were the vowels inside the word? So about the year 900 to 1000, textual scribes called the Masoretics came along and put vowel points into the Hebrew text so that people could know how to pronounce it.
Well, by that time, nobody was speaking the name Yahweh aloud. Instead of Yahweh, they would use [00:49:00] the term Hashem or Adonai, Adonai meaning Lord. That's why when you see in your Bibles the capital L O R D, Lord, and that is the word Yahweh. And this comes from the idea that Yahweh was replaced by the word Adonai.
Well, what are the vowels of Adonai? If you insert the vowels of Adonai, Into the conSonants of Yahweh, you come up with the word Jehovah, or Yehovah. And so we have the word Jehovah just as a misunderstanding of translation, that's all it is. But it became very prominent because of the King James Version.
Okay, next question. When did they stop pronouncing the name Yahweh? Well, it was clearly before the first century that they had at least started [00:50:00] to replace the name Yahweh and not to pronounce it. But it probably wasn't just a one and done deal. Like by the time of Jesus, there were probably people who still pronounced Yahweh.
And the reaSon we can know that is because people like Josephus in the first century were describing the prayers that were said, and they were still saying and speaking aloud prayers that included the name of Yahweh. So it probably wasn't until about the rabbinic time, the medieval time, where their foot was put down and they said, ah, no more pronunciation of this name.
However, it is clear that by the time of the New Testament, it had started to go that direction, especially in written form. You can see this parallel in, like, 2 Samuel, chapter 6, verses 9 and 11. You have the name Yahweh. Then you go to 1 [00:51:00] Chronicles 13, 12 and verse 14, and you have basically the same text, but instead of Yahweh, you have the word God.
We can look in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The name was written in different ways. Sometimes it was written in Paleo Hebrew font versus the square Jewish script. Sometimes the word Yahweh was literally replaced with Adonai. Sometimes Yahweh was written in red ink. Sometimes it was written just with four dots. Sometimes it was written as El in Paleo Hebrew. Some Greek texts were using a visual similarity.
So, before Jesus, the name Yahweh had already started being replaced in various texts. So, can we pronounce the name of Yahweh? Was it always the case that Yahweh wasn't pronounced, like in the earlier scriptures?[00:52:00]
Well, there's no evidence that anything was substituted for the name of Yahweh. In Genesis 4. 26, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Yahweh. We see Abraham using it. We see people saying it all over the place. In Deuteronomy 6, we have prayers that they were supposed to recite morning and evening, and those included the name of Yahweh.
So I don't think that there is any early examples of replacing or not using the name of Yahweh. This was a later tradition, a later development. So should we use the name Yahweh? Is there a problem with it? Well, I think it's a matter of conscience and who you're dealing with. Because there's plenty of people who do still want to respect that name and not overuse it. And it doesn't have to be like a legalistic thing and [00:53:00] whatever. It's just if you're with people who want to honor the name and not overuse it, then it might be a good idea to be sensitive to those people and not use the name. And I totally respect that.
Now, I have a public podcast and I use the name all the time. When I type it, I try to use the four letters instead of spelling it out. But I do pronounce the name Yahweh. And one reaSon why I do that is because if I didn't, it would be really hard to communicate well and accurately. And clarity of communication is very important to me. So, while I appreciate and would like to be sensitive to people who don't want the name Yahweh pronounced, it's just, it's really hard to deal with that if you're trying to be text based in what you're saying.
So, in your perSonal [00:54:00] settings, you know, I would say be sensitive to your situation. Be sensitive to the people around you. I don't think we need to say we can't use it because I think it's obvious people were using it. Now, whether or not you want to loop in this textual tradition of not using the name and being more sensitive to the name, well, you know, there's something to be said for that.
And I think that's something that we should think about deeply for our own selves. But, as far as teaching and trying to kind of communicate things, it's really hard for me to do that if I don't actually use the name. Because I want to be very clear in what I'm saying, very clear in who I'm talking about, and I want to use biblical terminology.
So that's kind of where I land on that. It just makes what I'm doing much easier. But I do suggest to you to think about your use of the name. And what you think about it and the [00:55:00] community that you're surrounded by.
All right. Well, there's several names that combine Yahweh with something else that we could talk about. Most of them don't really show up very often. The one I want to talk about most is Yahweh Tzabaoth, or Lord of Hosts, because this one's really interesting and we can kind of get into the weeds of what exactly hosts means. The word hosts is used in the Pentateuch for Israel's armies. It's used a lot there.
The root of the word is to wage war, but it's also connected to service in the tabernacle, which is fascinating. And the first place we see the noun, tsabaoth is in Genesis two one in reference to the heavens and the Earth. So a lot of people are asking, does that just mean the stars? Is it referencing the angels? Is it referencing everything alive? Is this [00:56:00] referencing, like, what is it talking about exactly? And it's hard to say.
The first use of Yahweh's Tsabaoth we see is in 1 Samuel 1, 3. And in the book of Samuel, we see this word frequently used for armies. This designation for Yahweh is also used a lot by the prophets, especially when the people were either defeated or or threatened by defeat.
And so I think, you know, we can have this idea that hosts does often refer to angels. It refers to the heavenly host. We see this quite often in Isaiah, for instance, but I don't think we need to get too like pedantic about it because it can also mean literal armies. And in the time that this was actually used, people were literally fighting other people.
And you know, during the exile and the time of the prophets, maybe Israel didn't have an army, but they [00:57:00] were thinking about the times that they had armies. And so the idea of the Lord of hosts is not just that God commands heavenly armies, but He commands an earthly reality. Even though Israel's armies fail. God would not fail. And so, I think that's what we should take away from this term. Not get all pedantic about whether it's talking about angels explicitly or not, especially because, like, it's a moot point in my opinion, because heavenly armies and earthly armies would be working in parallel no matter what you're doing.
But when the Israelite earthly army failed, God's armies and God's hosts, whatever that means, would not fail. And when Israel was fighting people, their success was never dependent upon their army, but [00:58:00] upon the Lord. That is kind of the point of this terminology, I think.
So let's get into our final two questions. Did the people know the name Yahweh before Exodus 6 3? Let's go ahead and turn to Exodus 6 3. This is God talking to Moses, and God says, I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. Okay, so, this term God Almighty here, that's El Shaddai.
And remember that shows up first in Genesis 17, which is the second time we see a covenant with Abraham. That's when Abraham's name is changed. That's when Abraham is actually promised Isaac. Because in Genesis 15, God only [00:59:00] says that Abraham's own Son is going to be his heir. And remember, after Genesis 15, that's when Abraham has Isaac with Hagar.
So, as far as Abraham is concerned, Isaac was his own Son and could be his heir. It's not until Genesis 17 where God promises Isaac. Okay, so that's going to matter here in a second. So what this sounds like in verse 3 of Exodus 6 is that God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but not Yahweh.
But let's turn again to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Which gives an alternate translation. I appeared to Abraham in the character of El Shaddai, but as to the character of my name Yahweh, I did not make myself known.
Lexham Bible [01:00:00] Dictionary suggests this from Alan Ross, who suggests Exodus 6 is, quote, expressly linking the name with the fulfillment of the covenant promises. When Israel would experience the fulfillment of the promise, Then, they would truly know Yahweh.
Now, it's possible that we have the name Yahweh in Genesis because later editors added it or, you know, maybe Moses wrote it and he already knew the name, so he put it there in Genesis. It's also possible that the name was known, but they didn't really know the linguistic meaning. It doesn't seem very likely to me that that doesn't tend to be how language works.
But I think that the idea here really is that it's the revelation of who God is in salvation history. In other words, Yahweh is telling Moses that the promises of the fathers are now being fulfilled.[01:01:00] And I think that it matters , how we see these two covenants with Abram.
Because in Genesis 15, we see Abram using the term Adonai Yahweh to address God. In Genesis 17, we see El Shaddai. This is where Abram's name is changed as well. This is where Abraham is promised to be the father of nations. Not just one nation, but nations plural. And remember, this is after Ishmael. This is where Isaac's birth is promised as well.
Once we get into Genesis chapter 18, we're back to the terminology of Yahweh. So, I think if we look at the actual text of Genesis and the use of El Shaddai here in context, it has a particular meaning. In Genesis 15, with the first promise, it is very, very [01:02:00] connected to the land. This is where we see the term Yahweh. In Genesis 17, the promise is actually broader. Abraham will be a father of many nations. We do not see the name Yahweh invoked here, but the name El Shaddai.
So fast forward to Exodus 6 3. They did not know me by Yahweh because I hadn't fulfilled the promises. But he had worked under the name El Shaddai. As far as the patriarchs went, they didn't see the fulfillment of the promises of Yahweh. But they did see things happening under the promises of El Shaddai.
I mean, another way you could look at it is that maybe they didn't use the Hebrew that Moses used. And so, of course, they didn't use the name Yahweh.
But I really think that it's very essential to understand [01:03:00] what the word Yahweh means and how it applies in context. What it actually means. Because, like I said earlier, this is the only name that is really wrapped up in who God is as a covenantal God. He is our sovereign creator. He is so many other things, but it is in the name of Yahweh that we understand God giving these unique promises. And it's not that other names aren't associated with covenant, but the name Yahweh is associated with this particular covenant.
So that brings us to the question of why the different names In Genesis one and Genesis two. Genesis one, we see the name Elohim. God is just referred to as Elohim. Starting in Genesis two, four, we see God referred to as the Lord God. [01:04:00] This is Yahweh Elohim.
Now, of course, some people have used these differences in the names of God to say Genesis one came from one source. And Genesis 2 came from a different source. And these two texts are entirely separate, and somebody later came along and glued them together, basically. And the only reaSon for the difference in names here, in this explanation, is that they were different authors who knew God by different names.
Now, I don't perSonally care whether or not these are two different creation stories written at different times with different people. They ended up in our inspired literature, and so they're meant to be here, they are meant to be together, they are meant to be read together, and I think they connect together very deeply because I think both have the context of sacred space.
They're both set up in the idea of temple and tabernacle and [01:05:00] covenant. But the difference here, there is a very big difference. When you look at Genesis 1, God is doing general creation, right? He's ordering the cosmos, he's creating plants, he's creating animals, and he's creating everything, right? Or at least organizing it all into a functional reality that we can live in.
Genesis 2 has the creation of Adam. So there's a perSonal relationship of God with humanity here. And remember, when you've got this name Yahweh The name Yahweh is going to promote and bring up ideas of covenant and promises. In Genesis 1, God doesn't have that perSonal relationship with plants and animals and sea creatures. In Genesis 2, [01:06:00] God is presenting himself as a relational being with humanity.
The word covenant is not here. We don't see God formalizing any kind of a covenant here. But the covenantal name is being used and God is interacting with Adam and Eve in a relational way, so we don't have to go with the idea that these are two separate accounts that just got smooshed together.
Whether or not that happened, it doesn't really matter because we can still see that what we have happening in Genesis one, and Genesis two are two views. Whether that's like a nuanced zooming in view. Or, whether it's a separate account entirely, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that there are different terms and names used.
And there's reaSons for those names. Just like in the rest of the entire Old Testament, the names and designations used by God [01:07:00] were purposeful. It wasn't just that this perSon over here and that perSon over there happened to know two different names. But they knew two different names because they were relating to God in a particular way.
I mean, maybe they did know two different names and they didn't know all of the names of God. But that was because God was relating to them in perSonal ways. God was relating to them particularly. Now I don't want to go all the way into saying that Adam had some sort of formal covenant because we do not see the word covenant. We do not see any kind of actual ceremony of covenant here, but we should see that relationship of God with humanity in the same light.
And so, again, it's not a threat that we see different names for God used in different places. It doesn't even have to mean that people believed different things necessarily. [01:08:00] But the names of God are a very deep and important part of revelation and knowing who God is.
So, I hope that this episode helped kind of sort some of that out for you and maybe give you a few more tools in your belt to go into your Bible reading and really think deeply about what it is saying about who God is and who we are.
Because that is the purpose of Revelation. It's not to show us the age of the universe. It's not to show us exactly how God mechanistically does anything. It is to show us who God is, who is He, and who are we in relation to God. What we see in the Bible is so vastly different from any of the other ancient Near Eastern literature, or any other religious literature for that matter.
God is mighty, He is our Creator, [01:09:00] He is so beyond us, and yet He perSonally relates to us as our Savior, and our Redeemer, and the One who sees us. It is absolutely awesome, and I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I enjoyed researching it, and I ended up with a very messy whiteboard, trying to categorize the names of God.
As always, thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for sharing the episodes, for even, you know, coming and talking to me in the various ways that you do. I really appreciate the feedback, and the questions I get, and the engagement. So, thank you guys very, very much. For those who aren't aware, you can find my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com where you can ask me questions, you can find guest profiles, you can find blog posts, you can find my artwork, you can find ways that you can help support me [01:10:00] financially, and a big shout out to those of you who do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so very much to you guys who do that. I cannot tell you what a blessing you are.
If you guys have any questions for me, for Q& As, or new episodes, go ahead and share those with me. If you're on the Wasteland of Facebook, come join my discussion group. And again, if you're interested in seeing my chart on the word Elohim, come and find me in one of those places. I appreciate you all, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
