Tuesday, November 23, 2021

The Importance of Luke 22:42 in the Trinity Debates

Carl R. Trueman  (Reformed) wrote the following when discussing Jesus' role as heavenly intercessor:


Prayer is a means of grace because the economy of grace involves the intercession of Christ. That intercession, even now, is what makes God’s grace a potent reality to individual Christians. The consubstantiality of Father and Son—that the Son is divine as the Father is divine, and both are one God—means that the Son’s intercession will always be heard by the Father and always answered in the affirmative. Were it not to, we could not say that the two are one God. (Carl R. Trueman, Grace Alone Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers Taught . . . and Why it Still Matters [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2017], 221, emphasis added)

 

This is why Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is anti-Trinitarian in nature:

 

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. (Luke 22:42)

 

Jesus did not get what he prayed for; appealing to Jesus praying in his human nature merely, not only is Nestorian in nature (making a distinction between the person of Jesus and his human nature) but rejects the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son.