Worst job in heaven: being a foot-cherub!
I love study Bibles; at last count, I owned about eight of them. Of them all, the biggest, and most beautifully laid out, is the massive ESV Study Bible. It has wonderful maps and charts, and voluminous notes.
They do, though, have a very noticeable theological bias – really, it should be called the [American] Evangelical Study Bible. I heard a recorded lecture by General Editor Wayne Grudem, and he made it clear that, for example, a concern to save the doctrine of biblical inerrancy influenced some of the translations. In general, the translation itself is basically an update of the RSV. If you want to know how American evangelical theologians read any part of the Bible, the notes, articles, and translations here are your handy guides – for better and worse.
Here’s some of the worse: to my surprise, the confused realm of Social Trinitarian speculation has invaded an appendix called “Biblical Doctrine an Overview”, in the “Trinity” section. In the four point summary of “the” doctrine of the Trinity, it is conveniently vague as to whether the one divine nature is a universal or a particular. (The former would fit better with ST, although their following entry on Christ makes it sound like his divine nature is a particular.)
But the part which really surprised me is this:
3. Because God is triune, he has eternally been personal and relational in his own being, in full independence from his creation. God has never had any unmet needs, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself give to all mankind life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships, and the reality of relationship can only exist where one has something or someone that is not oneself to relate to; if, then, God had not been plural in himself he could not have been a personal, relational God till he had begun creating, and thus would have been dependent on creation for his own personhood, which is a notion as nonsensical as it is unscriptural. Between the persons of the Trinity, there has always existed total relational harmony and expression; God is, from this standpoint, a perfect society in himself. Apart from the plurality of the Trinity, either God’s eternal independence of the created order or his eternally relational personal existence would have to be denied.
4. The Trinity provides the ultimate model for relationships within the body of Christ and marriage. …
Biblical Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the Trinity. (p. 2515b, emphases added)
You’ve got to love that last rhetorical spasm (Everything, I say, depends on this! Either agree with me on this, or you got nothin‘.) You also have to love the careful weaseling about whether God is literally a group – “from this standpoint”. We won’t ask whether God, being a “him”, is a fourth divine person, in addition to the three others which (somehow) compose him. The point urged here, is that God couldn’t possibly be (identical to) a person; rather, he (“he”?) must contain at least one person and someone (“something”??) else for that person to relate to.
We’ve debunked this sort of reasoning before here on trinities, here. The above does nothing whatever to show that either of these scenarios are impossible: a single divine person existed alone in a timeless state “before” creation, or such a person existed for a million years alone but in time (literally) before creation. Yet, this is what the argument is, lamely, trying to do. No reason has been given to accept the implausible premise that “Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships”. This is not obviously true, and further, it positively seems possible that there just be a single self / person in the cosmos, just thinking, e.g. “I’m all that’s here”.
The author is just repeating a common, yet bad, piece of reasoning – it seem to not occur to him or her that this implausible premise even needs to be argued for. Most disturbingly, this is being foisted on the layman as part and parcel of “Biblical Christianity”, in what is a sort of reference source – where speculation would seem out of place.
Things like this somewhat temper my love of study Bibles…
I should get a job with these guys! If this is the sort of rubbish they’re accepting, I can churn it out by the bucketload. Where do I sign up?
Dale -
I’m always confused on your stance of the Trinity. Can you point me to an article that summarises your ideas on the nature of God/the Trinity? And, would you say that God is or is not intrinsically relational?
Hi ScottL,
I’ve been working out my stance for many years – this is a big subject, too big for a comment. I may do a series some time on the evolution of my own views. For my views on “social” theories, see my “Unfinished business” paper, as well as the ones on Wierenga, and divine deception. I don’t think we have any reason to hold that God is “intrinsically relational” – that’s (with the exception of Richard of St. Victor) a recent theory, which is supported only by unconvincing arguments. I’m working on a paper to this effect – email me if you want to read it. This post and this one are also relevant.
God has six hands and three feet?
Actually I see four feet, the Holy Spirit has two. What disturbs me more is the way they’re all kicking those cherubs in the head.
Dale, I recommend strongly the New English Translation. It has just over 60,000 foonotes, most of them from the relevant scholarly literature on a range of topics such as textual criticism, history, and lexicography. These notes also identify a number of favourite Trinitarian ‘proof texts’ as being no such thing.
I think the Holy Spirit’s apparent second foot is actually the hand of another cherub. It’s holding the hem of his toga.
@Dale: is it right to say that a relational account of divine persons is “new”? I think we’d need to distinguish between ‘social trinitarianism’ with good old classical trinitarianism (Cappodocians and Augustine)–that is, a person is distinct from another person because of some relation. Both eastern and western theologians think that the Father is distinct from the Son by paternity. This is ‘relational’ in a wholly ontological sense, but not necessarily in a psychological sense.
When people today say “personhood is relational”, I never feel like this is a clear statement. What sort of relation? A psychological one? And, why assume that the ontological account of a divine person is going to be (or ought to be) the same as the ontological account of a created person?
In Heb 4:15 it states that Jesus was tempted in ALL pojnts as his brothers could Rob and Dave answer the problem that arises
could Jesus have sinned?
if not then was he truly tempted?
If yes then what would be the result?
Jim R:
Yes, I believe Jesus could have sinned.
If he had sinned, he would have failed his redemptive mission. I have no idea how God would have dealt with this.
Dave I believe it is only an hypothesis so as the wages of sin is death then if Jesus = God where would that have left that part of God? it is an absurd position
yes he could have sinned but thank God he “yet was without sin” no doubt in God’s wisdom He would have had a plan pf redemption
[...] I mentioned some time ago, the ESV Study Bible has a really bad entry on the Trinity, part of its appendix, “Biblical [...]