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trinitiesblog · 5 years

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Debating Dale Starter Pack

Please don’t take this personally, but in all likelihood, I’m not willing to debate you. I can only do so much with my time, and I am always over-committed. Also, I have to think you’re a worthy opponent. There have to be things I deeply respect about you and about your scholarly work. Most likely, though not necessarily, you will have a PhD in some relevant field and some relevant professional publications in philosophy or theology journals. So don’t get your hopes up. Still, if you were thinking about debating me, or just refuting me – here are some things you should study.

Absolute required reading: What is the Trinity? and “Trinity.” These will help you to understand why I’m going to ask you to clarify what Trinity theory you’re defending, or why I won’t allow you to smudge the difference between a Trinity theory and a claim that “Jesus is God” or that he is divine. (More on these below.) And if we are debating the Trinity, you will have to explain (at least) these six facts, facts which trinitarians who assume that Christians have always been trinitarian have heretofore not been able to account for. (See also here.)

I’m not going to be impressed if you urge that John 17:1-3 doesn’t say that only the Father is the only true God. (See also here.)

I will object if you argue that when a NT author says that Jesus fulfills some OT prophecy that was originally about Yahweh, this is the author’s way of saying that Jesus is Yahweh. I explain this fulfillment fallacy here and here and here. It is a beginner’s mistake in reading the NT, not any kind of deep insight, despite being endorsed by an embarrassing number of recent evangelical scholars.

Are you going to hit me with Richard Bauckham’s confused and confusing neologisms about “divine identity”? I really wish you wouldn’t, but if you must, you’ll want to read the published critique he’s been ignoring since before it was published, and also this and this.

You should think this is a sound argument. If you think a premise is false, you should have a strong reason to give for that claim, because as I explain here and in follow-up posts and podcast episodes, there are strong reasons for a Christian to agree with each premise. Evangelical apologists have been almost to a man ignoring this argument for years now, to their shame. Don’t join their ranks! If you’re unclear what a “sound” argument is, consult standard sources, like this.

These two talks explain why I will not be impressed with the points that Jesus is referred to as “God” and as “Lord” in the NT. In short, those terms are ambiguous in the NT, and these usages are not at all a way of hinting that Jesus “is God.” These authors never confuse Jesus and God.

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“But Jesus is worshiped!” Yes, he is and he should be, but this is not a problem for biblical unitarian theology. Here’s a problem for trinitarians: justifying the speculative claim that one should only worship someone if they have the divine nature or essence. It’s neither self-evident nor is it found in the Bible. It’s only an inference from post-biblical catholic traditions. In this talk below (or in this podcast) I explain why I worship Jesus without embarrassment, even though I don’t confuse him with God and do not think he “has a divine nature,” and why this isn’t idolatry, by NT standards. In brief: I go back to the original justification for worshiping the exalted Lord Jesus.

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Two natures theories about Christ are and always have been… to put it nicely, difficult, and it is not true there is some straightforward New Testament teaching here which is been the same from the beginning. For a historical overview of the speculations that led to Christ being called one Person in two natures, please see this, which distills a lot of information from a college course I have taught on the development of incarnation theories in Christian theology:

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Notice that back then (from Origen on) most of them did not construe the “natures” merely as essential properties – also see podcasts 143 and 144. But if we go with that properties interpretation of the “natures,” here are some problematic properties which are arguably essential to God which seem like they cannot be essential to any human: uncreatedness, aseity, omniscience, omnipotence, immunity to temptation, immortality/immunity to death. Yes, one can try to go the way of recent kenosis theories, but these go against Chalcedonian tradition and really have no New Testament support, with Philippians 2 being the only passage that even kind of sort of sounds like that.

Apologists and others treat appeal to “two natures” as a sort of one-size-fits-all solution to looming christological contradictions. How can Jesus have a god if he is God? Two natures! How can he be created and uncreated? Two natures! How can he know all yet be limited in knowledge? Two natures! How can he be immortal and yet die? Two natures.

I am convinced that there is a lot of hand-waving and fakery here. I’m not going to stand idly by and let you assert that appeal to two natures solves the problem at hand. I’m going to press you to explain how it actually solves that problem without creating christological problems which are just as bad. For a preview of that:

podcast 145 – ‘Tis Mystery All: the Immortal dies!

(Click through the slides linked near the bottom to follow this.)

But isn’t preexistence still a slam-dunk as far as the NT is concerned? Surprisingly, no!

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(For a bit more on John see podcast 70.)

And if we are debating the Trinity or “the deity of Christ,” I will be pointing out that if Jesus existed before his human life, it does not follow that he is one of three “Persons” in the triune God, or even that he is divine. In fact, people held such theories for about two centuries before it was popular to say that the Word is divine in the same way the Father is, and more than two centuries before confession of a triune God was made mandatory. If you are going to trot out standard apologists’ lists of early “fathers” calling Jesus “God” or “a god,” I will be pointing out that monarchians aside, they all held that Jesus (or the Word) was a lesser divine being, and that none of them so much as mention any triune God, at any time before the second half of the 300s. Propagandistic historical narratives, anarchonistic readings of the Bible, and sophistical traditional catholic arguments must yield to knowable historical facts. You don’t have to be a philosopher to debate me, but it will help if you aren’t scared by analytic philosophy, and if you have a healthy respect for honest history and for careful, charitable, non-anachronistic reading of historical works.

Here below is more against confusing Jesus with God, and untangling some common point-missing re: John 17 and John 20. You’ll have to be patient and work with the logic here. If you think logic should not be used in theology, I will not be interested in debating you. To me, use of logic is just due diligence in careful, critical reflection on divine revelation (loving God with all one’s mind), and use of clear, refutable arguments is a sign of humility and intellectual honesty, not of some sin called “rationalism.” It is the arrogant speculator who is offended at the very idea that he should have to submit to reason.

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Want to try to prove the Trinity apart from the Bible, using reason alone, arguing that God wouldn’t be perfectly loving unless God is multiple Persons? Really, it’s a bad idea, as I explain here and also in a forthcoming co-authored paper.

I’m probably leaving some things out, but I think this will give you plenty to chew on. To refute or debate me you will need to do more than to point out standard proof-texts or gesture at a vague idea of an argument for the Trinity or for the deity of Christ.

https://trinities.org/blog/debating-dale-starter-pack/

#Apologetics #Bible #Books #Christology #Complaints #Debates #Events #Heresy &038; Orthodoxy #Incarnation #Linkage #Logic #Monotheism #Mystery #Philosophy #Theories #Unitarianism #Worship

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romancatholicreflections · 6 years

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27th May >> Sunday Homilies & Reflections for Roman Catholics on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year B. The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity Gospel Text: Matthew 28:16-20 Trinity 1vs.16 The eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had arranged to meet them. vs.17 When they saw him they fell down before him, though some hesitated. vs.18 Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. vs. 19 Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, vs.20 and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.” *********************************************** We have four commentators available from whom you may wish to choose . Click on the name of the commentator required. Michel DeVerteuil: A Recently deceased Trinidadian Holy Ghost Priest, director of the Centre of Biblical renewal Thomas O’Loughlin: Professor of Historical Theology, University of Wales, Lampitor Sean Goan: Studied scripture in Rome, Jerusalem and Chicago and taught at Blackrock College and now work’s with Le Chéile Donal Neary SJ: Editor of The Sacred Heart Messenger and National Director of The Apostleship of Prayer. **************************************** Michel DeVerteuil Lectio Divina with the Sunday Gospels www.columba.ie General Comments This Sunday the liturgy invites us to celebrate the feast of the Trinity. In our church we tend to look at the Trinity as a doctrine. It is something we are meant to hold and believe; we learn about it with our minds and with our reason. But we add the proviso that we cannot understand it. “Understanding” is viewed as the important thing; if we can’t understand it we are not making much progress with it. This is not, however, the best way to approach the doctrine of the Trinity. What we need to do is to retrace the journey made by the church. We enter into the spirituality of Jesus through the practice of lectio divina. Gradually we find that we experience the Trinity as a “mystery”. This is the liturgical sense of the word. It is something we celebrate because we know it makes us better human beings, as we follow ever more closely in the footsteps of Jesus. trinityIf we base ourselves on the gospel texts we come to the Trinity as something we experience. Our model is Jesus himself: the Trinity for him was what he lived, it explains how he experienced himself, how he related with his Father and with the Spirit, with others and with the earth itself. The church, reflecting on his experience, was later – and only gradually – able to formulate the church doctrine of the Trinity. The gospel reading for this Year B is an excellent starting point for this journey. Jesus saw that authority in the world was something that was “given” to him. It was a “gift” he had received from the Father. It was given to him by someone in Heaven, his Father who dwells in heaven. It was not a truth that he was able to discover for himself, nor one that he came to experience from his own decisions. It was always something he had “received.” As Son he was able to exercise this gift. He had the authority to do this. He practiced the reality of the Trinity with personal power. He exercised this authority for himself and from his own observation. Having received it from outside himself, he put it into practice in the way he related with people. Holy-Trinity2 Jesus therefore did not have to hold on to his authority. He took the decisions for himself, or it was decided for him in the name of the Father. In either case, he practiced it by handing over his authority to the care of his disciples. Since the authority was something “given” to him, he was able to give it over with no personal regrets. Jesus lived his “Trinitarian spirituality” especially from the time he felt able to depart from the world. He had always been humble in how he handled his authority; now he could be totally confident in handing on to others everything he had accomplished. This was why he could say with full freedom that he could hand everything over to the Holy Spirit. “All authority is given to me,” he told his disciples once he had decided to leave his mission in their hands. They could “go therefore” wherever they wanted, trusting that wherever they went, he would be alongside them, adding to what they believed in whatever he wanted for them to achieve. We too, then, must be conscious of our authority as “given”. It is never possessed by us. We too can exercise it confidently and humbly and then willingly pass it on to others when the time comes. Evil qualities like jealousy or possessiveness or a fear of letting go are symptoms that the Trinity is not real for us. It means that we take authority as ours and not as “given”. Faith The things we can feel free to hand on to others include all forms of authority, especially that of our faith in Jesus. We must therefore take “baptizing in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” in a very wide sense. It does not merely refer to our church baptism; it includes the entire work of the church, the process of inviting people to experience authority as Jesus did. We take the time to celebrate the many people who have shared this “baptism” with us. We pray that they too will have the grace to approach “all nations” with this wide and tolerant “Trinitarian Spirit.” Prayer Reflection Lord, we thank you for the various ways in which you reveal your presence to us: there are times when we experience you as Father through teachers, community leaders, members of our family, spiritual guides to whom you have given authority in heaven and on earth, so that we feel empowered spiritually and can assume responsibility in our workplaces and in public life. At other times we experience you as Son, through the great people you send us as companions. They do not talk down to us. When we fail in some great enterprise and have to start again, like the eleven disciples setting out disconsolately to return to Galilee, they come up and speak to us as fellow pilgrims who have themselves been defeated, so that they can tell us now to go out confidently and share our wisdom with all the nations. mirror jesusAt other times again, you are deep within us, like our breath, so discreet that we do not even advert to your presence; but you are the source of life and energy, always with us, so that even when we feel lost and discouraged we can say, yes, you will be there till the end of that time. Thank you that we have been baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Lord, people in authority often cling to those in their charge. We tend to do it as parents, teachers, ministers in the church, political leaders. Help us to be more like Jesus when he met the apostles in Galilee, free enough to know that our work is not limited to the here and now, that if we have helped others in any way we can tell them to go, because wherever they are we will be with them. When we understand this, we are truly baptised in the name of Trinity. “If there is any lover of God living on this earth who is continually kept from falling, I do not know about it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown, that in falling and in rising we are always preciously kept in the same love.” … Julian of Norwich Lord, we pray for those who are feeling discouraged at this moment because they have committed some sin that has them feeling ashamed. Remind them that you are with them always, yes, even to the end of this time. Lord, we pray for all of us who are called to exercise leadership – in public life, in your church, in our homes and neighbourhoods, on the world stage. missionary signHelp us to imitate Jesus; to be conscious, like he was, that all authority in heaven and on earth is given to us for a time, after which we commission those we have worked with to go out into the world. We are not afraid to move on because we trust that whatever values they have learned from us are like commands we have given them which they will observe and will hand on in their turn, so that we will be with them always, yes, to the end of time. “Unity is taught by Moses; the prophets proclaim duality; in the gospels we meet the Trinity.” … St Epiphanus Lord, you have created out human family in your image and likeness, baptized us in the name of the Blessed Trinity. As individuals and as cultures you have made us all different so that each of us has been given a unique share in your universal authority in heaven and on earth. We exercise this authority, not as a personal possession, but as a gift we have received from someone else in the family and then shared with others, so that even though we are here for a few short years and then move on, wherever in the world your great command of love is observed we are all present and will continue to be until the end of time. ************************************* Thomas O’Loughlin Liturgical Resources for the Year of Matthew www.columba.ie Introduction to the Celebration god1This feast is unique in that the focus of our celebration is not an aspect of the history of salvation, but reflection on the nature of God as we believe it has been revealed to us as Christians. Thus every Sunday is the Sunday of the Trinity, every feast, every action has a trinitarian dimension, and should any prayer be uttered or homily preached which does not include that core of faith – at least tacitly with a conclusion such as ‘through Christ our Lord’ – then we are apostates, and have ceased to be Christians and become some sort of vague deists or unitarians who value the ‘message of Jesus’. At the outset of the celebration it is worth reflecting that today’s focus is the very essence of Christian identity. We begin every liturgy by stating that we are acting ‘In the name of the Father …’ and that is a declaration of our basic faith, not just an opening formula. Our aim in today’s liturgy should be to become more sensitive to the trinitarian cues that run right through our religion. Homily Notes 1. Go back through the second reading and note how Paul’s relationship with Jesus — Jesus is Lord — leads him to adopt a way of speaking of God as Father which Jesus had taught his followers. Moreover, Jesus had spoken of sending the Spirit and so the Spirit too is spoken of as ‘Lord’. holy-trinity32. Paul is adopting a formula already in use within the churches, it is a formula that speaks of the relationship we Christians have with God: we live and move and have our being in God the Father, God the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Spirit. 3. We do not accept ‘the trinity’ within our minds in the way we accept other religious notions such as ‘God loves us.’ The mystery of the Father, Son and Spirit is the mystery of God and as such cannot be comprehended by a created mind. Rather, we accept this as part of the gracious revelation of God and respond in the way of Jesus: him we address as Lord; with him we call on the Father; from him we accept the Spirit. *********************************** Sean Goan Let the reader understand www.columba.ie Gospel These are the closing verses of the gospel of Matthew and they illustrate very well the growing faith of the early church in what Jesus has revealed. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus witness to the activity of God the Father through him, and now at the end of the gospel with you alwayswe see Jesus not leaving his disciples but promising to be with them until the end of time as they fulfil their mission of making disciples of all nations by baptising them and teaching them to observe his commands. This text is ideal for today as it is a reminder that faith in the Trinity brings with it a mission to let the whole world hear the good news about God.] Reflection It is a striking fact that in the ancient world those civilisations that were great in terms of conquest, building, literature and philosophy have left us little or nothing of their religious beliefs. On the other hand, a people who were considered of no particular significance from a small stretch of land in the eastern Mediterranean have passed on to us their enduring concept of God. This is not a god of pagan superstition nor even of the philosophers. This is Yahweh, the God of Israel, who became known to the people through the experience of their own history and who subsequently revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth. Today we are not celebrating a mystery we are never destined to understand; rather we are contemplating the God in whose image we are made and whose name is Love. ****************************************************** Donal Neary SJ Gospel Reflections www.messenger.ie/bookshop Father, Son and Spirit When we think of the word Spirit can we think of something lively? A sort of a flow of living water; a cycle race rather than a traffic jam. The flow of life in us rather than the ways we block life. It is the spirit of God whom we call Father, Son or Christ and Spirit. We live in that sort of love. The church is called to be that sort of community. The trinity can make God totally distant. But that is not Jesus. He is the one who gets right into life, bringing God into humanity as one of us. Jesus talked so much about farming, weddings, death, illness, joys, trust, creation, nature, breakfasts, gardens, dinners; he is the God of the table more than the God of the temple. His spirit flows in all of creation, love, suffering and joy; He finds us in all things. We need that big view of God. He makes everything sacred. Even the name Father, Son and spirit. Our call is to flow with him, to go with the flow of God’s Spirit. We are the flow of God in the world. We become what we receive – the love of the Trinity in the world. We become like Christ himself as we receive this bread of life, called to be his witnesses. By what we say and do, in all we are. Give thanks to the Lord for his presence in the Eucharist.Father, Son and Spirit, enfold me in love, the love of your eternal life. ********************************

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askapentecostal · 7 years

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Are Apostolic Pentecostals Unitarian? I am asking because there is a church in Dallas that is Pentecostal Unitarian, so is this the same?

There are a number of both Unitarian and Trinitarian Pentecostals. The exact number I really do not know so I couldn’t put a half description on it. I want to be careful not to try to associate all followers of either belief to a single one of those labels because with each there are many subsections that have different opinions of what it means to be Unitarian or Trinitarian. Now that being said, there is a great difference in the two.

For instance the method of baptism and obviously our different understandings in who God is and God’s nature. In my experience with Trinitarians they do not put a Heaven or Hell point on the nature of God whereas most Unitarians do. And I, being a Oneness AP, would defend that argument with:

John 8:24 KJVSI said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he , ye shall die in your sins.

Here we find a clear emphasis in Jesus requiring that we believe that he is Jehova God of the Old Testament or else we will die in our sins. It is a Heaven or Hell issue. You cannot argue that he is not referring to God of the Old Testament because within this scripture the translator italisized the word “he” as a crucial emphasis that this was indefinitely the God Jehova he was referring to and you’ll find he clearly states it prior to him declaring it a Heaven or Hell issue.

John 8:19 KJVSThen said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

Understand this, Jesus was not crucified for claiming to be a prophet of God or a different being than God. He was crucified for claiming to be the Jehova God that they revered and worshiped daily under Judaism and the Mosaic Law.

Had he been claiming to be anything other than His punishment wouldn’t have been such a public statement. He may have been stoned and that would’ve been the end of it but they wanted the ultimate punishment for such a claim that they felt dishonored the Jehova God.

I believe that I speak for the rest of the group when I say, we stand firmly by Oneness Doctrine and the teaching of the existence of a numerically one, indivisible, omnipresent God.-Caleb

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trinitiesblog · 7 years

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Hays's Nelson Muntz "objection" to unitarian theology

Hays has replied to my previous post. As usual, I omit most of his abuse and ranting, and try to find some meat. There is a scrap or two in the sauce, once you thoroughly filter it. About purely philosophical arguments from theism to Trinity, I said: “By far most [trinitarians] have never so much as heard of them.”

Well, I don’t know about that. For instance, Bruce Metzger deploys those arguments in his classic 1953 article…

I stand by the comment. Just poll most of the (officially) trinitarian Christians you know.

I said,

And among trinitarians with some philosophical education, enough to understand how such arguments are supposed to work, the wiser among them see how tenuous they are.

Yet he admits that Swinburne and Davis mount arguments like this. He’s saying they lack wisdom? Davis teaches at Claremont, where Dale studied. Seems likely that Dale was a student of Davis. Does he think Davis is a hack?

Pretty uncharitable reading there! Both Swinburne and Davis are good philosophers, and they know that such arguments are tenuous – in the sense of speculative and not hard to dispute. They’ve been famously critiqued by another good philosopher, Brian Leftow, in his 1999 “Anti-Social Trinitarianism.” And of course by yours truly. All three are good philosophers, good Christians, and good men, and yes, Davis was my teacher, and has a been a true friend since. The others are friendly colleagues whom I respect and admire.

[Dale:] A very proper and reasonable skepticsm kicks in. In my view, which is also the view of many trinitarian philosophers and theologians, we should think that whether any Trinity theory is viable should depend on whether or not it best explains scripture, and not on any argument like this.

Dale talks out of both sides of his mouth. He explicitly attacks the Trinity on philosophical grounds, alleging that it violates the indiscernibility of identicals. He preemptively disallows Biblical testimony to the Trinity on philosophical grounds.

Steve seems not to understand my work, so typically, he goes for the personal attack. Basically, whenever he says I’m lying, two-faced, or stupid – that’s because he doesn’t get it. (Of course, many a more patient and sympathetic readers does.)

For the umpteenth time, there is no one Trinity theory; and so, it would make so sense for me to try to somehow rule out “the Trinity” on philosophical grounds. Some Trinity theories have indiscernibility of identicals problems, while others don’t. Steve think that his theory does, which is probably true, and so he calls his own theory here “the Trinity,” is if this were simply what the tradition says. But again, the traditions gives only formulas and vague ideas which a person then must make sense of as best he can. See chapters 6 and 7 in my book about the diversity of views here.

[Dale:] Stage 1: Show how it is impossible for there to be a unipersonal god. In other words, any god must be multi-personal. (Sometimes this is expressed clumsily, that there can’t be “a unitarian god.”)

…Thus, for Stage 1, you must derive a contradiction (or some evident impossibility) from the concept of unipersonal god, a god who is a single, great self.

My argument didn’t aim that high. Try again.

That’s what Davis and Swinburne and Morris are trying to do. Perhaps Steve is just none too clear about what must be done. They’re trying to show how there can’t be a unipersonal god, so that theism implies the falsity of unitarian theism. Those arguments are what I’ve been critiquing in that paper and posts that he linked.

Perhaps Steve imagines that “undercutting” or “undermining” unitarianism just alleging that it has some problem, something that strikes Steve as a little funny? Well, that’s not too interesting a game. But yeah, it’s harder to lose at it! If he just prefers not to engage – that’s up to him.

When he [John] says “God is love,” I think that’s synonymous with “God is loving”… Now, it may be that John intends something deeper. That God is the ultimate source or exemplar of love. Be that as it may, I take “God is love” to mean love is a divine attribute.

Right. As I said,

So then, I agree that “God is love.” At most, this means that God is essentially, paradigmatically, and maximally loving. Let’s grant all that, leaving aside sober exegesis for the sake of argument. But this doesn’t imply that he must always actually love another, any more than his being merciful entails that he’s having mercy on another.

What about never loving another? Would he still be loving?

Conceivably, yes. Just as a person might be forgiving and merciful, and yet never actually have the opportunity to actualize those tendencies or character traits. And so God can be perfectly loving, and yet be free to never create, to be forever alone. But of course, never lonely. All of this seems as possible as can be. Can’t deflate it with just a few rhetorical questions.

[Steve] That, however, raises another issue. If creatures are all God has to love, then there’s a lack of parity between the lover and the beloved. A unitarian god relates to humans the way a boy related to his pet lizard.

[Dale] Well, that’s a wild non sequitur! For the Jew or Christian, a “unitarian god” relates to humans like Yahweh in the OT relates to Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah, and how the Father of the NT relates to Jesus, Paul, and John. Hard to see how Hays thinks it follows that the heavenly Father of Jesus’s teaching must instead be like a third grader with a gecko!

Is Dale really that dim? The metaphysical distance between God and man is infinitely greater than the metaphysical distance between one creature (a boy) and another creature (his pet lizard). That’s the point of the comparison.

This metaphor of “metaphysical distance” seems to be fogging Hays’s vision. The God of the Bible is supposed to be incalculably, infinitely “above” us, yet he speaks to men, reasons with them, and enters covenants with them. No, not at all like the boy and his lizard, despite the “greater distance.” There is a kind of parity still there, in the God-humans case, at least, enough for a kind of friendship that far surpasses what a pet owner has. That is why the scriptural king-subjects and husband-wife metaphors are appropriate for the God-creatures relation.

But let’s not lose where we are in the argument. Suppose that divine-person to divine-person love would be qualitatively better than divine-person-human love. But, why must a divine person enjoy that better kind of love? Because he’s “perfectly loving.” That’s a clear non sequitur, though. One can be perfectly loving without actually loving another. To have the perfectly loving character trait does not imply engaging in the best kind of love. So, Hays’s argument isn’t getting anywhere. As I said before,

What he’s not grasping is that “love” as a divine attribute need not be an action; it is plausibly a character trait, just as with God’s being merciful, or his being forgiving, kind, or generous.

Does Dale just lack reading comprehension? I addressed that distinction in the OP. Why does he repeat objections that I already dealt with, as if nothing was said by way of reply?

Hays has this weird habit giving a wholly unconvincing argument, and then when later you’re still not convinced, he’ll shriek that you’re just not paying attention, ’cause clearly he’s already creamed you many times. This is not a good habit for a would-be apologist! (Hays can be helpful in this regard.)

[Dale] There is no hold, seemingly, that the action of loving can get on perfect being reasoning. At least, this has only ever been asserted; it has never been shown that an absolutely perfect being must be loving another.

But that wasn’t my argument. I didn’t say that to be morally perfect, God must be loving. That wasn’t a premise of my argument. I happen to think that’s true, but that’s a different argument. Rather, my argument, at that stage of the argument, was based on the nature of love as a relation. Why does Dale find it so hard to follow the actual argument?

Riiiight. It’s clearly me who’s getting confused. Anyhoo, just from love being a relation, nothing interesting follows, as the conversation has already shown. You have to also employ a premise that a divine person must be enjoying the best kind of love (which isn’t self-love, which seems like a reflexive relation). I assume you try to justify that with perfect being reasoning. But it’s Hays’s argument, such as it is. He might try out some other justification. I’m listening.

[Steve] …I’m pointing out that dispositions or character traits are properties of persons. So it’s inadequate for Dale to terminate with love as a character trait, for that’s not where the explanation ends. There’s something more ultimate than character traits, and that’s the personal property-bearer of personal properties like love.

This is a truism, that only persons/selves can stand in relationships of interpersonal love.

[Steve] why would God have an intrinsic capacity for something merely contingent? For something that God can do without?

[Dale] Because God is essentially absolutely perfect, and this entails the ability to enter into I-Thou relationships. That seems like a pretty good answer, right?

Is Dale speaking for himself or attempting to speak for me?

Himself.

Once again, my argument wasn’t predicated on perfect being theology. Rather, it involved a distinction between necessity and contingency.

If Dale is speaking for himself, why would God’s essential perfection entail the ability to enter into I-Thou relationships?

Yes, it does entail that.

On the one hand, he denies that God has to make creatures to provide I-Thou relationships. On the other hand, he regards divine self-love as sufficient. So where is there room in God’s essential nature for this intrinsic capacity?

Self-love is sufficient for what?

In my view, intrinsically and essentially, God is able to love another, and he is also essentially all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing. So necessarily, God possibly has someone to love, someone he makes.

We’re all still waiting for that part where some problem for unitarian theology appears. Hays seems to think that he smells one about, but he can’t put his finger on it.

Feel free to keep looking, Steve, for that silver bullet against non-trinitarian theism. But I don’t expect that you’ll find it. It would probably have been found long ago and be widely known and agreed on, if there were some conceptual problem with belief in a perfect self.

From a unitarian perspective, why would God be less than “essentially absolutely perfect” if he didn’t have an innate capacity for interpersonal relationships?

Because then he wouldn’t be absolutely perfect. He’d be greater if he had such a capacity. To not have it would be a terrific disability.

Would God be incomplete if he lacked that capacity? But why would he be incomplete if he lacked a capacity for something that’s unnecessary to his being and well-being? If the unitarian God is complete without interpersonal relationships, and if self-love is sufficient, why is it necessary for him to have that capacity in the first place? Isn’t that superfluous rather than essential?

I’ve just answered all of these questions above. Capacity for love of another is plausibly necessary to his being, as it seems essential. But here’s another compatible answer. If a god is supposed to be someone we can personally deal with, personally relate to, who can hear our prayers, intervene, forgive, help – then such a being must be capable of a kind of friendship with humans. So “God” would hardly be a god, in the above sense, if “God” were unable to love another. But the biblical “God” is supposed to be a god, a necessarily unique one. Of course, a unitarian Christian thinks that God is a loving, merciful, covenant-making god because of scripture, tradition, and Christian experience. But yeah, even a full-blooded concept of a deity seems to presuppose a capacity for some kind of interpersonal love.

[Dale] this is what we should think about God, that he’s self-sufficient, and not at all in need of company – neither for his sanity nor for his existence.

Whether the unitarian God is self-sufficient is not a given. That’s the very question at issue. What’s the basis for presuming that a unitarian God who experiences the (physiological) passage of time is immune to loneliness?

Perfect being theology. Self-sufficiency seems to be a perfection. It is implied, I think, by aseity – that God neither exists nor has his perfections because of any other.

Steve, you’re the one trying to make a problem here; it is incumbent on you to show some impossibility. Otherwise, you’re just emoting that it all seems weird to you. You need an argument, sir. Just an (imagined to be) devastating question, asked with an air of incredulity does nothing.

I would add that we also have the unipersonal portrayal of God in the Bible together with its assumption that God is not needy in any sense.

[Dale] Is he arguing that divine sanity requires divine company? If so, that’s a stretch! Why, Steve, should we think that a divine person must be a social animal, a type of being which requires the company of its own kind in order to thrive?

Our understanding of God requires us to analogize from human experience. That’s our frame of reference.

Again, revelation, not just experience.

Moreover, humans aren’t just any kind of creature. Along with angels, humans are the highest creatures we’re know of. Both humans and angels are interpersonal beings. Indeed, that’s characteristic of more intelligent species. Is God less than we are?

Of course not. But just because we have a feature, and God is greater, it doesn’t follow that he must also have that feature! The idea of perfect being reasoning supposes that God has the greatest compossible set of features. Now, let’s take care with the term “interpersonal.” It might mean friend-needing. Or it might mean, capable of friendship. Humans are certainly both. Angels, at least the second. If you’re a Christian, you must say that God is the second. But is he the first? It would seem not. He’d be greater if he could exist and flourish without depending on another. And so plausibly, a perfect being would not need friendship.

Now, this sort of reasoning is defeasible. If we had some some “social” trinitarians imagine – a scriptural portrayal of three perfect, divine friends living in an eternal dance of blissful communion – then we might wonder if there being three is necessary, for it’s hard to see how it have some other sort of explanation. This is, I think, basically how such speculations got restarted in recent times. But remember what we’re doing here. Hays is saying “Well, that’s kind of weird, ain’t it?” about the unitarian’s concept of God. And he’s laying aside scripture, to see if he can make trouble for it just conceptually. But as you can see above, he doesn’t get anywhere.

No, it doesn’t seem weird to us, Steve. All your questions are easily answered. This view of God as a perfect self seems a great fit with scripture and with reason. If you could kindly show us how our view entails some self-contradiction or how its inconsistent with some necessary truth, well, that’d be very helpful of you.

I skip the end of his post, where he goes way out on a limb, gets easily pushed out of the tree, and then has a tantrum. Hilariously, he thinks that I’m losing it, as I’ve have “the tables turned” on me!

But you can read the end of the exchange and see how it went.

http://trinities.org/blog/hayss-nelson-muntz-objection-to-unitarian-theology/

#Apologetics #Bible #Complaints #Divine Attributes #Linkage #Philosophy #Unitarianism

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Hays on attempts to argue from theism to Trinity

At Triablogue apologist Steve Hays has posted on my critiques of purely philosophical arguments from theism to the Trinity. It is worth saying at the outset that most trinitarians don’t put any stock in such arguments. By far most have never so much as heard of them. And among trinitarians with some philosophical education, enough to understand how such arguments are supposed to work, the wiser among them see how tenuous they are. A very proper and reasonable skepticsm kicks in. In my view, which is also the view of many trinitarian philosophers and theologians, we should think that whether any Trinity theory is viable should depend on whether or not it best explains scripture, and not on any argument like this.

But, these arguments are enormously tempting for trinitarian apologists. Wouldn’t it be neat to have a philosophical club to wield against any and all non-trinitarian monotheists? In other words, wouldn’t it be awesome to show that their god is impossible, something that couldn’t be real, like a square circle? You just want to pick that low-hanging fruit, don’t you?

Hays feels that temptation. He writes, A. Some Christian philosophers and theologians have proposed a priori arguments (i.e. arguments from reason) for the Trinity. … Tuggy has attempted to debunk these arguments on more than one occasion:

http://trinities.org/dale/SinglePerfect.pdf

http://trinities.org/blog/are-persons-essentially-relational/

http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-132-10-apologists-mistakes-about-the-trinity-part-2/

B. Let’s reframe the issue. Instead of considering a priori arguments for Trinitarianism, suppose we consider a priori undercutters for unitarianism. These don’t propose to directly prove the Trinity. Rather, if successful, they provide indirect support for the Trinity by undermining unitarianism.

A sensible move, given the failure of philosophical Trinity arguments. We failed to get a touchtown. So, let’s re-describe the situation; actually, we were trying to merely gain five yards. But wait… did we even do that?

Hays does nothing new here; philosophers like Davis realize that there are two stages to this argument strategy:

Stage 1: Show how it is impossible for there to be a unipersonal god. In other words, any god must be multi-personal. (Sometimes this is expressed clumsily, that there can’t be “a unitarian god.”)

Stage 2: Show how it is impossible for there to more or less than three divine persons. In other words, any god must not only be multi-personal, but must also be exactly tripersonal. Can’t be only two, or more than three.

Hays wishes to focus on Stage 1. This is sensible, as Stage 2 is evidently harder to argue, and is pointless unless Stage 1 works. What Steve is less clear about, though, is what must be done. The way you show the (metaphysical, absolute) impossibility of a situation is to show how it implies a contradiction, or at least how it implies something else which clearly seems impossible. Or short of this, you show how the opposite of that situation seems necessary (i.e. impossible that it not be).

Thus, for Stage 1, you must derive a contradiction (or some evident impossibility) from the concept of unipersonal god, a god who is a single, great self.

Suppose these arguments fall short of proving that God must be no less than three persons and no more than three persons. Although they fail to prove that God is tripersonal, if they undermine the grounds for believing that God might be unipersonal, then they are successful undercutters for unitarianism. That’s analogous to a Christian apologist who proposes an undercutter for atheism. If successful, the logical alternative isn’t necessarily Christianity. So additional arguments would be required to narrow the field down to Christianity. However, to eliminate atheism from rational consideration is a significant first step.

I think by “undercutter” he means what some epistemologists would call a “rebutting defeater.” But the point is clear enough: it’d sure be neat if it could be shown that a unipersonal god is impossible. Then if Stage 2 fails, who cares. We just fall back on our brilliant, overwhelming arguments from the Bible to the Trinity. (What could go wrong… right?)

But it’s all for nothing unless some impossibility can be shown. Hays takes a few stabs at it, but his efforts are wholly unconvincing.

I skip Hays’s musings about “proof.” Finally getting to the point, he reaches for the idea that somehow “God is love” requires the falsity of any uni-personal theology.

D. The nature of love

1. How can God be love if he has no one to love? In the nature of the case, love is a relation.

Notice what this argument doesn’t claim. It doesn’t claim that love must be generous. It doesn’t claim that love is diffusive.

It doesn’t claim that God would be imperfect if he had no one to love. It doesn’t even claim that God would be imperfect unless he was loving by nature.

Rather, it’s a conditional claim: If God is love, then given that postulate, divine love must have an object–because love is a relation.

He gestures at a couple of different types of arguments here. But he seems to settle on a rather obvious category error. He puts “love” in the category of relation, like bigger-than or same-size as, and then says that since “God is love,” then God must be a relation, and so have objects “between” which God exists.

It’s obviously impossible, though, for God to be a relation or a property or an event, etc. A god is by definition a being, an entity that can stand in relations, have properties, undergo events. Relations, if there are such things, don’t love, create, know, or respond – but God does. On the face of it, it is wildly unlikely that John means to make such an assertion anyway, but Hays just wants to run with this out of context, weirdly interpreted sentence. Got to get that prize!

I think his point would be better put like this. Love is an action or attitude of a self. And it is one which takes an object, real or imaginary. Love is always directed at something. But of course, that something can be the lover himself! If we want to represent love as a relation, it can be a reflexive relation. These are all clear conceptual truths.

2. Dale might respond that God does have something to love. God loves his creatures.

No, Dale wouldn’t do that, as that’d be missing the point. Most of us want to deny that God has to create anything at all. So a trinitarian should not want to say that God is always and necessarily loving because he always and necessarily has a cosmos featuring suitable objects of love. In fact, good philosophers like Davis build this into a premise of their argument – see the paper of mine linked above, and the references there.

That, however, raises another issue. If creatures are all God has to love, then there’s a lack of parity between the lover and the beloved. A unitarian god relates to humans the way a boy related to his pet lizard.

Well, that’s a wild non sequitur! For the Jew or Christian, a “unitarian god” relates to humans like Yahweh in the OT relates to Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah, and how the Father of the NT relates to Jesus, Paul, and John. Hard to see how Hays thinks it follows that the heavenly Father of Jesus’s teaching must instead be like a third grader with a gecko!

Christians are rightly critical of couples who choose to have pets as an alternative to kids. If love is an essential divine attribute, can that be satisfied by a contingent and inferior corollary?

Here, Hays gestures at the idea that the best kind of love is love of another which is at least roughly an equal, so that the friendship is more like that between lovers than that between Mom and kid, or kid and dog. That’s plausible… but, so what?

3. Dale might respond that self-love is adequate.

If so, one problem with that response is that it’s equivocal. To be loving in the sense of self-love isn’t the same kind of love as loving another.

I do think that of necessity God exists and loves himself, yes. How could he not? That he loves himself seems to be entailed by his own value and his own perfect rationality and knowledge. But Hays, again, realizes that any sort of trinitarian argument will require that any divine person must, by his essence, be actually loving a peer. That, though, has not been shown. It’s merely on the would-be Trinity prover’s wish-list.

We could pursue this general line of argument in additional directions, but let’s save that for a related argument:

When all else fails, change the subject!

E. The nature of personhood

1. Does the very idea of a person necessitate interpersonal relationships? Is personhood intrinsically relational?

Obviously not. See the post with the Robinson Crusoe image above. This is recent, groundless and wildly implausible speculation.

2. One of Dale’s counterarguments is that love is a character trait, not an action. An agent can possess that disposition or virtue even if he never has a chance to actually manifest that virtue.

Let’s put this more carefully. “Love” can mean either of those two things. But what seems required by perfect being theology, because it says that God is morally perfect, is the character trait. There is no hold, seemingly, that the action of loving can get on perfect being reasoning. At least, this has only ever been asserted; it has never been shown that an absolutely perfect being must be loving another.

But there are problems with that counterargument:

i) Although love is a disposition or character trait, personhood is not. Rather, personhood is the basis for dispositions or character traits, which inhere in personhood. So that’s more fundamental.

In the context of the point about love, this is just retreating to an even less plausible argument – arguing that mere divine personhood necessitates interpersonal relationship/friendship with another.

ii) Perhaps even more to the point, why would God have an intrinsic capacity for something merely contingent? For something that God can do without?

Because God is essentially absolutely perfect, and this entails the ability to enter into I-Thou relationships. That seems like a pretty good answer, right?

Humans can have an unrealized potential for interpersonal relationships, but that’s because humans are essentially social beings. Why would a unipersonal God have that innate capacity in the first place, if his ability to socialize is inessential to who or what he is? In unitarianism, the existence of other persons is a contingent fact.

See previous answer. The god, so to speak, of perfect being theology is a self, a being with the greatest sorts of knowledge, power to intentionally act, and to choose. That is why a “unipersonal God” (in other words, a god) have the innate capacity for interpersonal relationships.

3. Dale has leveled another counterargument:

The same point can be made with a simpler, more chilling story. Some have speculated that those who are sent to Hell are neither literally burned nor actively tormented, but are simply cast into permanent, utter isolation. Imagine this happening to you; you are judged for your deeds, and then find your self in an empty, dark place. You call out, “Hello? Is anyone there?” Days, weeks, months pass, and your sanity hangs by a thread, for you are deprived of any degree of attention, as far as you can tell, from anyone. (If God is aware of you, you have no hint of this – he has seemingly abandoned you.) You are devoid of any sort of friendship or communion. But, you are as much a self as you ever were – not a thriving one, to be sure, but a self nonetheless.

Nice point, me! Yes, this seems possible. And so, it seems false that any self is essentially relational, in interpersonal relationship to other selves. But Hays thinks he’s got me here:

But ironically, his counterargument is self-defeating:

i) Let’s play along with the notion of solitary confinement. In this case, unitarian solipsism.

Suppose you put a person in a windowless cell. No companions. No movies. All he had was his own mind to entertain him.

And suppose this person was immortal. Remember that Dale regards God as everlasting rather than timeless. For him, God has no beginning or ending. So God experiences the (psychological) passage of time.

Suppose, after a century, or millennium, or million years, or billion years, or trillion years, you open the door and let the inmate leave solitary confinement. What will his mental condition be like? To judge by a human standard of comparison, he’d be catatonic or stark raving mad.

So it’s not just a question of whether a unitarian deity can initially be a person, but whether the psychological integrity of personhood requires companionship, in whose absence it will deteriorate.

This point is irrelevant; a red herring. Of course, a human person would fail to flourish in long solitary confinement, in total social isolation. But, so what? It is coherent to suppose that there should be a person/self not subject to that limitation, without that absolute need. And indeed, this is what we should think about God, that he’s self-sufficient, and not at all in need of company – neither for his sanity nor for his existence.

4. Perhaps Dale would say that’s too anthropomorphic. That illicitly extrapolates from human nature to the divine nature.

Duh.

What is he doing here? Is he arguing that divine sanity requires divine company? If so, that’s a stretch! Why, Steve, should we think that a divine person must be a social animal, a type of being which requires the company of its own kind in order to thrive?

If so, there are problems with that rejoinder:

i) Dale is an open theist, so he already has a far more anthropomorphic view of the deity than classical theism.

ii) What are the limitations of an argument by analogy from man to God? God and man are different in two ways: some things are true of God that can’t be true of man while some things are true of man that can’t be true of God. For the extrapolation to be vitiated by disanalogy, Dale needs to show that one of those two things limitations applies in reference to the argument at hand.

Now we’re just getting off track. He’s trying to go on the attack here, but what does this have to do with showing that there can’t be a single divine person?

ii) Dale constantly impugns Incarnational, Trinitarian theism for taking refuge in mystery or paradox, but if unitarianism posits a God for which there’s no analogy in human experience, then unitarianism is apophatic, which is an appeal to mystery. An ineffable, inscrutable God.

This is so upside down that it’s mind-boggling. We all experience ourselves, and other selves, and unitarian theology says that God too is a self, though a much greater one. So, God is somewhat like things with which even all atheists are familiar. Beings with two natures? Zilcho in ordinary experience – nothing like that. Beings which are multipersonal? Ditto. Both ideas notoriously obscure, unfortunately. And, fortunately, both are unneeded for understanding the Bible, which was entirely written before such theories saw the light of day.

Is the “God for which there’s no analogy in human experience” one which doesn’t get lonely, which is not a social animal? If that’s what he means, we do have relevant experience for a being like that: non-social animals! These would be any kind of animal, real or imagined, which is able to flourish without interaction with any other members of its own kind, or even with any other conscious being. Perhaps some biology major out there can suggest an actual, uncontroversial example of such an animal.

A being that’s said to be essentially personal or unipersonal without being essentially interpersonal is opaque to human understanding. That doesn’t correspond to our grasp of what it means to be a person.

Nonsense. Hays has given us no reason to think that being in relationship with another is part of “what it means to be a person.” He seems to be merely asserting this, or to be making a wholly unconvincing argument from analogy: God is like humans, humans need others to thrive, therefore God needs others to thrive.

When the unitarian makes God that remote to human understanding, that inapprehensible, then what does his concept of God amount to? What’s the difference between God and no God?

LOL!

God, according to unitarian Christian theology, is… well, all that the Bible explicitly or clearly implicitly says! Nothing in there about essential interpersonal relationships. It’s hilarious to suggest that somehow the unitarian must lose all grip on the concept of God. Ever read the Bible? Each and every “god” mentioned therein is assumed to be “unipersonal,” as seen in the incessant use of singular verbs (etc.) and singular personal pronouns – including the one true God himself, aka the Father. (John 17:3)

This multipersonal god concept is alleged to be implied there, I know, but frankly, the arguments are all dodgy – as are the arguments of this post. I suggest Steve would do better to start with one of Davis’s arguments, or one from my paper above, and then try to defend it.

http://trinities.org/blog/hays-on-attempts-to-argue-from-theism-to-trinity/

#Apologetics #Bible #Philosophy #Unitarianism

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Kimel’s review of What is the Trinity – Part 3

In part 3 of his review of my book What is the Trinity?, called “Ante-Nicene Subordinationism and the Unitarian Narrative” our Orthodox friend Al Kimel claims that I’ve misunderstood Origen.

First, a picky point: the subordinationism in historical catholic theology goes way past Nicea (325). It’s prominent in the years 325-381, and persisted for some time after they started to stomp it out in 381. Nor was the 325 statement always understood to remove all (ontological) subordination! Perhaps it should be more like Ante-Chalcedon subordinationism.

…until the ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). At this point, he claims, the unitarian wheels fell off and a very different Deity began to be proclaimed and dogmatically imposed.

As I say in the book, there is no mention or hint of a tripersonal God in the 325 creed. In the 381 version, I hold that the Trinity is implicit. Is the Trinity “a different deity”? Well, it’s a fictional deity, unfortunately. Many trinitarians will say, though, that it’s the same deity as the Father, who according to the NT is the one true god, aka God. This would seem to require relative identity theory; but I won’t go there now.

Our reviewer then quotes the “Athanasian” creed, as if this expresses “the” doctrine of the Trinity. I know this has become a popular creed for trinitarians, but as I discuss in the book, it’s not easy to find any actual view there – just as with Augustine, whose writings are clearly a main source for the anonymous creed writer. Fr. Kimel rightly notes, though, how strikingly different that creed is from the many earlier ones which start by confessing belief in “one God, the Father Almighty.”

He describes these earlier creeds as having “‘unitarian’ structure,” I guess because he doesn’t want to admit that they’re unitarian, in that they presuppose a unipersonal God. But I don’t know what he means by “structure” there, or why he put quotes around the word “unitarian.” Such statements plainly presuppose that the one God just is the Father himself. They are unitarian creeds; it is a mere distraction to say only the “structure” (but not the content?) is unitarian.

Naturally, he would like to find some sort of trinitarian theology much earlier in church history than the late 4th c.

But perhaps we should look earlier than the fourth century for the decisive departure from the allegedly unitarian Deity of the New Testament—namely, to the mid-second century when Christians began to interpret their triadic faith in light of Hellenistic philosophy.

When trinitarians can’t find a triadic God were they would like to find one, they often postulate something else that is “triadic” (triple in some way or other). Thus, our reviewer says that 2nd c. Christians had a “triadic” faith. What does this mean? The statement will be false if “triadic” means having to do with a tripersonal God. But in what sense might it be true? I don’t know. Perhaps just, a (unitarian) faith that involves using a three-part baptismal formula based on Matthew 28:19?

In any case, Fr. Kimel quotes me discussing the theology of Origen (mid 3rd c.):

… other things which are to some degree divine must “participate in” or “imitate” God, who is the universal divinity, to various degrees. Thus, the Son and Spirit, as divine, get their degree of divinity ultimately from the Father, that is, from God himself. And for some, the Spirit gets his indirectly, by way of the Son. … there is a triad of three divine beings, with the second and third ultimately depending on the first for their existence and divine nature/essence. In this way, the members of the trinity share the universal essence divinity. It is the result of God (either eternally or a long time ago) as it were producing inferior copies of himself, putting a degree or amount of his divinity into two others.

Fr. Kimel comments,

Here we see the decisive movement from Jewish monolatry to philosophical monotheism.

I disagree. Jewish monolatry (worship of exactly one) has been changed by the time of Paul; early Christians worship the risen and exalted man Jesus, now honored as “the Lord.” Two are worshiped, in both Philippians 2 and in Revelation 5. That’s not monolatry! But it is monotheism. The second, despite what our Muslim friends will assert, does not obviously entail the first.

Beginning with the Apologists, divinity is identified as ultimate reality and the unconditioned ground of being. God is a monadic being whose properties include reason, wisdom, goodness. Once having decided to create a cosmos, he needs to generate a second divine self, the Logos, to mediate the divine act of creation. This being now stands between Deity and the world.

Yes, this is basically right – for the Platonists. “Unconditioned ground of being” is probably going too far for some of them. And it is clear in most of the logos theorists (c. 150 on) that God somehow can’t create directly – a strange limitation for an omnipotent being, if you think about it!

One might even argue that the positing of metaphysical mediators began with the Apostles Paul and John. After all, it’s pretty strange hearing Paul asserting that the entirety of creation exists through the man Jesus [1 Cor 8:6] or John declaring that “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (Jn 1:3).

Well, that’s how the logos theorists taught us to read Paul and John. It’s not clear that this is correct, though. Briefly, it’s not clear that 1 Cor 8 has to do with the Genesis creation, and it’s not clear that the “Logos” or Word of John 1 is supposed to be personally identical to the man Jesus. The idea that God can’t directly interact with the cosmos is foreign to the Bible; see the many theophanies of the OT, or God speaking at Jesus’s baptism.

But why the need for one or more intermediaries between the absolute Creator and the cosmos?

Good question!

More importantly, how is this not polytheism?

Yeah, that’s what all the “monarchian” catholics objected, c. 150-250. Christians still, in that time, instinctively named God the Father as creator – despite having had Paul and John’s writings available for many decades.

Clearly neither Apostle thought he was compromising the monotheistic commitment of their Jewish faith,

Right, because there is still only one god – the Father. Jesus is, in contrast, the unique “Lord,” clearly understood by all the NT writers to be under God. The Father, for them, is Jesus’s god. This can neither be disputed, nor, unfortunately, can it be reconciled with any known Trinity theory. Hence, the clash between NT and later theologies.

…yet here they are identifying the crucified and exalted Nazarene as an agent of divine creation (for analysis of Jewish monotheism and the divinity of Jesus, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel).

I do not recommend that book! It is the source of much confusion. I’m surprised to see my Orthodox friend recommend it too, as Dr. Bauckham suggests that the old language is outdated, and he’s trying to replace it with his confused language of “the divine identity.”

Is this Jesus divine, semi-divine, quasi-divine, or perhaps just an exalted creature?

We’d better get clear on what we mean by “divine” before we hazard an answer!

He then gives an interesting quote from Dr. David Bentley Hart:

…For Christians who thought in [broadly Platonist, subordinationist] terms, this almost inevitably implied that the Logos had been, in some sense, generated with respect to the created order, as its most exalted expression, certainly, but also somehow contingent upon it. Thus Christian apologists of the second century often spoke of the Logos as having issued from the Father in eternity shortly before the creation of the world. (“The Hidden and the Manifest,” The Hidden and the Manifest, pp. 143-144)

Well, contingent only on God, or maybe we could say or his decision to create. In other the words, this Logos exists because God needs an intermediary to create, and he is intending to create.

The metaphysical result is a hierarchical chain of being, with a series of mediators between the immutable One and the world of change and multiplicity. Hart’s analysis jives with Tuggy’s observation that the Logos theorists of the second and third centuries consistently speak of degrees of divinity: the Father is perfectly divine in the simplicity of his being; the Son is in some sense less divine; the Spirit even less so.

Right. Again quoting me,

Elaborating this scheme, in the 1st and 2nd centuries it became popular for platonic philosophers to posit some transcendent triad, three sources of the cosmos, the primary among which is always the ultimate source, with the other two standing between this and the cosmos. In the latter half of the 2nd century, philosophically minded Christians too started touting their own triad and coined the words we now translate as “Trinity” (Greek, trias; Latin, trinitas) to refer to it.

[Kimel adds:] Given the Hellenistic worldview which everyone inbreathed, it is hardly surprising that early Christian theologians would interpret the biblical narrative of the Father, Son, and Spirit in subordinationist terms. To have done otherwise would have required a metaphysical revolution.

Keep in mind that most believers would have been thoroughly non-philosophical. And others might have been more influenced by the Stoics. So, they weren’t all Platonists, although that philosophy had a lot of prestige in these times. I view this as a failure within the Christian community. There weren’t enough Christian scholars to talk back to the Platonists, to temper their influence, or to push back against ideas that really did not fit apostolic tradition. Too little philosophy, in my view, not too much! Yes, I know that people like Origen did not just uncritically accept all Platonic claims. But there should have been more independent-minded people loving God with their minds, to reign in the creeping dominance of divine timelessness, simplicity, the cosmological scheme of Plato’s Timaeus, and hazy ideas about universals and “humanity,” and the whole Platonist anti-matter ethos.

I must admit here, that many of my biblical unitarian brethren would just say phooey on all philosophy. I would answer them that there is no getting rid of philosophy; it can’t be done! As nowadays, the solution for bad science is good science, even then, the solution to bad philosophy was pushback from people no so enamored of the Platonic and Stoic traditions.

Even the great Origen appears to have maintained the subordinationist structure:

The God and Father, who holds the universe together, is superior to every being that exists, for he imparts to each one from his own existence that which each one is; the Son, being less than the Father, is superior to rational creatures alone (for he is second to the Father); the Holy Spirit is still less, and dwells within the saints alone. So that in this way the power of the Father is greater than that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and that of the Son is more than that of the Holy Spirit, and in turn the power of the Holy Spirit exceeds that of every other holy being. (First Principles 1.3.9; fragment 9)

Yes. Not a slavish or stupid Platonist, but very influenced by that school.

Origen is a critical figure for both the unitarian and Trinitarian narratives of the development of Christian doctrine during the first four centuries. Tuggy sees Origen as continuing the subordinationist Logos tradition, while noting (though without comment) Origen’s crucial innovation—namely, his assertion of the eternal pre-existence of the Son and Spirit. Why is this important? Because it means that at no point did God ever exist apart from the Son whom he has begotten. God exists eternally in relation to his Son; the Son exists eternally in relation to his Father. …Christ is intrinsic to the divine being and constitutes the identity of the Creator.

Whoah! A trinity of glaring non sequiturs at the end here!

If X eternally causes Y to exist, then essentially (perhaps even necessarily) X and Y are related. That doesn’t follow. X might by an act of free will cause Y, and be able to not do that.

If X eternally causes Y to exist, then Y is intrinsic to X. But Y is not intrinsic to X; “intrinsic” basically means non-relational. A part, property, or aspect of something would be intrinsic to it. But presumably not something else, which forms no part or component of it, which it causes.

About the Bauckhamism “constitutes the identity of” – goodness. What does that even mean? And why think it follows from the one eternally causing the other?

Notice what is happening here. Through (all too quick) speculation, Fr. Kimel is trying to show how Origen etc. really imply something that is hopefully trinitarian. But these are not their ancient lines of argument. The situation is being “reverse engineered.” And not successfully. If you find this spinning persuasive, I say, read Origen’s Commentary on John , his short Dialogue with Heraclides, and his Against Celsus.

A century later St Athanasius would echo his fellow Alexandrian: “God, in that he ever is, is ever Father of the Son” (De decretis 12). Origen thus quietly subverts the subordinationist framework in which he is theologizing.

I don’t get it. Seems wholly compatible with subordinationism. We can say that priority in time (existing before) is one kind of superiority one being may have to another. But it’s not the only kind! Being may completely overlap in time, or both be timeless, and yet one may be greater in various ways than the other.

Fr. Kimel goes on to quote Dr. Lewis Ayres as saying that for Origen, the Son is “intrinsic to the nature of God.”

No! For Origen, God and the Logos are two beings.

[Ayres continues]…Origen argues that Father and Son are ‘correlative’ terms. The name Father implies the existence of a child, and if God is truly called Father, the Son’s generation must be eternal.

It’s a dodgy argument, though. I can truly say things like, “My father grew up in California” – but of course then he was not my father, or anyone’s father. If God was only a Father-to-be at some point… so what?

The Son’s existence thus seems to be essential to God’s being what God from all eternity wills to be. Thus we see that while the Father is superior to the Son, Origen works to make the Son intrinsic to the being of God: subordinationism is an inappropriate word for describing this theological dynamic. (Nicaea and Its Legacy, pp. 22-23; also see John Behr, The Way to Nicaea, chap. 7)

I would ask Dr. Ayers here what he means by “intrinsic.” As best I can tell, for ancient thinkers it is properties which are essential to a thing, and these must all be intrinsic (I think they analyze relations as really being sort of directed or vector-like intrinsic properties). Logos, though, is supposed to be a being, not a mere property. I’m not sure than what he means by saying that on this theology the Logos is “essential to” the Father.

Sometimes we mean by “essential” just whatever properties or relations which a thing must have or stand in, so long as that thing exists. Roughly: ways it must intrinsically be, or must be related to some other thing(s).

Tuggy has evidently overlooked this crucial point, thus marring both his presentation of Origen and his analysis of the fourth-century debates on the nature of God. This leads me to make the following observation: Dr Tuggy is strongest when he is writing on the analytic philosophical discussions of the Trinity; he is weakest when he writes on the Church Fathers (excepting, perhaps, Tertullian, whom he seems to know pretty well).

Sorry, but I don’t think that I have overlooked any crucial point here, or that I have misinterpreted Origen. Honestly, the above sounds like his prejudice against analytic philosophers coming out, the idea that we are all mere logic choppers who are mentally rigid, and so cannot get their heads around historically important sources. But my training, and a lot of my work, has been on older material. And a lot of analytic philosophers are very careful readers of historical works.

Origen is not all that hard to interpret on these things, so long as we take care to work around the corruption problems in On First Principles. He thinks the one God just is the Father, and that the Father eternally causes a lesser divine being, the Logos, who in turn eternally causes the yet lesser, but divine Spirit.

In sum, our reviewer feels the sting of the plausible unitarian historical narrative that I briefly outline in the book. So he wants to undermine that narrative, and rehabilitate the trinitarian narrative. I don’t see that he’s really got anywhere in the first project. For the second, let’s see what he does in his next installment.

http://trinities.org/blog/kimels-review-of-what-is-the-trinity-part-3/

#Bible #Books #Eastern Orthodoxy #Heresy &038; Orthodoxy #History #Philosophy #Theories #Unitarianism

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trinitiesblog · 7 years

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wheel-spinning on the Trinity

Over at Triablogue, Reformed blogger Steve Hays has posted some thoughts in defense of trinitarian theology. As best I can tell, he’s never really had a developed view of the matter. He’ll pop out some wild personal speculations from time to time, but mostly he hunkers down in apologist mode, which is: the Trinity is obviously taught by the Bible, the Trinity is obviously essential to Christian theology, all real Christians have always been trinitarians.

His most recent post, though, is instructive, if a bit muddled. It is a variation on the common apologists’ theme which I’ve called “The Standard Opening Move.”

He starts,

Let’s begin with a crude formulation of the Trinity:

i) There is one God

ii) The Father is God

iii) The Son is God

iv) The Spirit is God

v) The Father is not the Son, &c.

Unfortunately, these aren’t sufficient for a trinitarian theology. One can easily interpret these sentences in a unitarian way, or in a modalist / Oneness way. Where’s the tripersonal god part? (He’s assuming that i-v imply it… but just look at them!) But I think his point is that the trinitarian will be committed to these, on some interpretations or other. Yes – that’s right. Back to Steve:

On the face of it, this appears to be formally contradictory or polytheistic. Now a formal contradiction is just a verbal contradiction rather than a logical contradiction, so that, of itself, isn’t all that concerning.

If ii-iv each imply that the “Person” in question is a god, then given that they numerically differ (v), they can’t be the same god, but must be different gods. But then i is false. So i-v seem contradictory on the assumption I start this paragraph. And that assumption is implied my trinitarian traditions on which each “Person” alone “is God” or is fully divine, e.g. the “Athanasian” creed.

BTW a mere verbal contradiction (e.g. “I’m tired but I’m not”) isn’t the same as a formal contradiction (e.g. P and not-P). The first is supposed to have to do with the surface, grammatical structure, while the latter is supposed to be about the deep or true formal structure of the propositions expressed. But I think he’s gesturing at the point that not every apparent (formal) contradiction really is one, which is true and important. He continues,

If, however, we say that “God” has the same sense throughout, then it’s much harder to eliminate a logical contradiction.

2. But suppose we don’t define “God” in the same sense throughout.

Here’s his main idea, the “meat” of the post, wherein he tries to make a distinction to banish the contradictions.

Suppose we introduce a distinction between “God” as an abstract noun and “God” as a concrete noun. As an abstract noun, “God” denotes divinity, divine nature. As a concrete noun, “God” denotes the particular being who is God (like an abstract particular). Let’s plug that semantic distinction into a more refined formulation of the Trinity:

i) There is one God (concrete noun)

ii) The Father is God (abstract noun)

iii) The Son is God (abstract noun)

iv) The Spirit is God (abstract noun)

v) The Father is not the Son, &c.

Not only does that dissolve the formal contradiction, but there’s no prima facie logical contradiction either. This is not to deny that the persons of the Trinity are individuals, but the semantic distinction concerns the definition of “God”, and not their particularity as distinct individuals.

This move, I think, is confused. “Divinity” is not a meaning of “God” by itself. Rather, “is God” can express “is divine.” Notice that in this revised i-v, “is” in i and v must mean “is numerically identical to” – it is numerical identity which is denied three times in v, and i asserts there to be one which just is (is numerically identical to) God. But if we read “is” is the “is” of identity throughout, it makes nonsense of ii-iv. The Son, etc. can’t be numerically identical to a property. (Yes, I know the divine simplicity folk disagree.)

I think what Steve’s really getting at is the difference between numerical identification and mere predication (description). i and v involve the first, and ii-iv involve the second. So what his revised sentences really amount to is this.

i) There is one God.

ii) The Father is divine.

iii) The Son is divine.

iv) The Spirit is divine.

v) The Father is not the Son, &c.

Has this eliminated any appearance of incoherence? No! The sort of divinity at issue in catholic tradition is the sort that implies that one is a god. But then ii-iv entail that each is a god. And when we add v, we get that there are at least three gods. But this contradicts i.

D’oh! We’re just spinning our wheels.

Finally, Steve admits what I pointed out at the start – that i-v don’t fully express any trinitarian theology.

Now, I don’t think a simple formulation of the Trinity can do it justice; I don’t think individual words are adequate to capture the conceptual richness; but as simple formulations go, that’s a good approximation.

The point doesn’t help his apologetic project here, of banishing apparent incoherence. The reason is that if trinitarian theology requires at least i-v, then whatever more is required, the theory is still stuck with the seeming incoherence of i-v.

The only ways out are denying some of i-v or coming up with a theory which provides a different interpretation of i-v. There are some out there, but none can claim to be “the” doctrine long believed by catholic Christians.

What a Protestant should be wondering is whether scripture really authorizes ii-iv in the same sense. In my view, it implies ii understood as making a numerical identity claim, and not only as a description of the Father.

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#Apologetics #Bible #Complaints #Protestant #Theories

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