His abstract:

There are two general routes that Augustine suggests in De Trinitate, XV, 14-16, 23-25, for a psychological account of the Father’s intellectual generation of the Word. Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, in their own ways, follow the first route; John Duns Scotus follows the second. Aquinas, Henry, and Scotus’s psychological accounts entail different theological opinions. For example, Aquinas (but neither Henry nor Scotus) thinks that the Father needs the Word to know the divine essence. If we compare the theological views entailed by their psychologies we find a trajectory from Aquinas, through Henry, and ending with Scotus. This theological trajectory falsifies a judgment that every Augustinian psychology of the divine persons amounts to a pre-Nicene functional Trinitarianism. This study makes clear how one’s awareness of the theological views entailed by these psychologies enables one to assess more thoroughly psychological accounts of the identity and distinction of the divine persons.

Godspeed on the dissertation, Scott!

(Link to Scott’s posts.)

But inquiring minds want to know: what did they believe, what statement or statements of faith did they sign, and are the beliefs therein necessary and sufficient for being a real Christian? This time, we’re digging a little deeper.

Their website saith,

World Vision U.S. hires only those who agree and accept to its Statement of Faith and/or the Apostles’ Creed. (source)

Interesting! Note the “and/or” – employees must affirm either one or both. As we’ve noted before here at trinities, nothing in the so-called Apostles’ Creed requires belief in either the “full deity” of Christ (whatever that may mean) or any sort of trinitarian theory. Go ahead – click their link above and read it.

• Did the three fired employees disavow the Apostles’ Creed?
• Or did they affirm it?
• Suppose they accepted it with no reservations… doesn’t that mean they could not be fired? If not, why not?
• Or did they accept it with reservations?

Here’s the relevant portion of World Vision’s statement of faith.

We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory. (emphases added, source)

I’m afraid this is typical American evangelical theological mush, featuring the weasel-words “in” (first sentence) and “deity” (second item).

The “in” phrase is current shorthand for some Trinity theory or other, but honestly, a resourceful unitarian could accept both of the above statements.

Our imaginary unitarian employee of World Vision could defend herself as follows:

Keep in mind that “person” means something like a mask, role, or personality – we’re not necessarily talking about the modern concept of a self. So, I believe in one God, the Father, who express himself in three persons. First, his own persona, as Father to Jesus and to all believers. Second, through the man Jesus, his special Son and servant. Third, through the guise of his own active power, which can seem like a third party. Do I believe in the deity of Jesus? Certainly. He’s the Son of God. He was sent by God, and empowered by God’s spirit. In all these senses, he was a divine man. And yet, he was a man.

Further, “one God, eternally existent in three persons” is probably most naturally understood as modalism – one self, acting or living in three different ways, in three different personalities. And a resourceful social trinitarian like Richard Swinburne could no doubt accept the formulas as well. The words in their doctrinal statement, then, fail to clearly express any precise views about God and Jesus. It seems to me that a lot of evangelical talk of the “deity of Christ” (or him “being God” or “being fully God” or “100% God” etc.) functions primarily as a sort of shibboleth, and that’s what is going on here. Their statement also owes something to a distinctively American anti-creedal tradition, which goes back to the founding of our country – but that’s a story for another time. The result is a distinctive sort of Christian tradition zealous to police itself for correct beliefs, but without interest in making precise distinctions.

Thanks to Google, a few more tidbits on our story, from a sort of newsletter by an interested (but uninvolved) lawyer:

Sylvia Spencer, Vicki Hulse and Ted Youngberg (the “Employees”) were all employed by World Vision. Like every employee, they attended daily devotions and weekly chapels held during the workday. However, at some point, the Employees stopped their attendance. World Vision interviewed each Employee as to why they stopped their daily devotions. Their responses were not recorded by the court, but World Vision concluded that each employee had they denied the deity of Jesus Christ. Even though the Employees denied this conclusion, World Vision nevertheless terminated their employment. The Employees sued World Vision for firing them, claiming that their terminations were based upon their religious beliefs. (source, emphases added)

This suggests that the three opted out of some required activities – something unclear in the CT story, which seems to add that they’d been given permission for some alternative. But more importantly - the three who were fired denied the denial? Really? (Imagined conversation: “Ya’ll are denying the deity of Christ!” “No we aren’t!”) What is going on here?

• Are they trinitarians who hold that Father and Son are numerically distinct, but claim that the Son is divine? e.g. Are they social trinitarians?
• Are they unitarians? Subordinationists? Jehovah’s Witnesses?
• Do they subscribe to kenosis theory?
• Are they dastardly liars, secret admirers of the Jesus Seminar, masquerading as evangelical Christians?
• Or do they neither affirm nor deny the vague thesis?
• Are the employees interpreting the statement of faith one way, and the management another?
• Or is the dispute about interpretations of the Apostles’ Creed, with World Vision taking the hopeless position that it clearly requires beliefs that Jesus is “fully God” and that he’s a member of the Trinity?

Slap me and call me “Curious George”, but I’d like to know. If this denial-denial part of the story is true, this is a big complicating factor which CT never should have left out of its story.

Congratulations to both debaters on a fight well fought.

Kudos to C. Michael Patton and Parchment and Pen for hosting the debate.

I hope you readers out there enjoyed my commentary on the debate. I sometimes got naggy or nerdy, and always expressed myself with typical lack of tact, but I tried to be helpful, and to show the helpfulness of philosophy and logic in thinking through these things.

In this last post in the series, a few concluding reflections on the debate.

Looking back on this debate, I see that I’ve ended up where I began: wondering what Bowman thinks the Trinity doctrine is. This, after all the debate was about whether or not the Bible teaches that.

Burke argued that the Bible teaches what I call humanitarian unitarianism (he calls it “biblical unitarianism”) – roughly, that the one God of Israel is the Father, whereas the Lord Jesus is a human being and his unique Son, and the Holy Spirit is God’s power. I understand what Burke argued for, and if it is true, then nothing that can claim to be an orthodox Trinity theory is true. But I don’t, in the end, understand Bowman’s view.

I flagged this issue at the start. As the debate wore on, I settled on the interpretation that each of the Three just is (is numerically identical to) God, and yet each of the three is not identical to either of the other two. I stuck with this interpretation, all the way to the bitter end. And yet, I never did like this interpretation - Bowman is a smart guy, and it is not charitable to interpret anyone, much less smart guys, as (even implicitly) contradicting themselves. Still, it seemed to best fit his claims, his lists of propositions he offered as definitions of the doctrine, and his defense of the apparent contradictoriness of the doctrine in the comments following Burke’s last post.

Why, then, does Bowman think of the “persons” as three something-or-others in some sense “in” God? These “persons”, he insists, are not selves (thinking and acting things, things each with a first person perspective on the world), because they are not things/entities/substances, and every self is a certain kind of entity. Bowman wants to say that God isn’t in this sense a “person”, though God is “personal” in that God “contains” three “persons”. What is such a “person”? He doesn’t know. I don’t either.

I might have guessed that Bowman is, like some theologians, a modalist – holding the “persons” to be ways God is, lives, or acts. (This is common – in eschewing “modalism” most theologians mean only to deny that the persons never overlap in time, or that they are merely appearances.)

But this interpretation doesn’t make sense either. It seems Bowman considers God to be a self, and Jesus to be a self. And, Jesus and God are one and the same (numerically identical). Same what? Same god, same divine self. That’s the point of all the divine titles, deeds, honors, etc. – those can only belong to the one god, God. If they belong to Jesus (as Bowman urges) that’s because God is who Jesus is. And yet, surely he assumes that Jesus just is the Son of God. But the Son of God is one of the three “persons” in God, and so is not a self, not a thinking and acting thing. I don’t get it. I wish I did.

You can argue till you’re blue in the face that the Bible teaches X. But if I don’t grasp what you mean by X, I can never be persuaded by you. Burke argued that the Bible teaches Y, and it is clear enough that if Y then not-X, and Y consists of claims A, B, and C, each of which I understand. Still working on X, though. Thus, Burke wins the debate, in my view.

I understand this much about Bowman’s position – he’s defending evangelical talk about God and Jesus. And thinking (sometimes?) of Jesus as just being God himself. And he holds that only his view remains faithful to the Bible – to all of it, and that this is the only humble view, whereas others proudly and unjustifiably discard some of what the Bible says.

But is it humble to rest in an apparently contradictory interpretation of the various texts? This comment by Bowman was telling:

As a debater, I could be pleased by the approach that you took to this debate, since in terms of the debate your approach has played into my hands. …Consistent with anti-Trinitarianism in all of its forms, over a third of your closing statement focuses on what you correctly describe as “the argument from reason.” In addition, four of the ten bulleted points articulating the superiority of Unitarianism to Trinitarianism with which you begin your closing statement are rooted in this argument from reason. Yet the debate is supposed to focus on which of our positions best reflects the teachings of the Bible.

Bowman thought that Burke had wasted much of his closing statement on concerns about what is consistent, as if this were irrelevant to interpreting the Bible. But normally, for all of us, Bowman included, that an interpretation is apparently contradictory is a weighty reason to avoid it. Why, then, accept it here? I think a factor in many people’s thinking is the idea that what Bowman was urging is the majority report of Christianity through the ages. There’s a kind of complacency that comes from being in the mainstream… or at least thinking you’re in the mainstream.

But the evangelical habit of putting things in terms of who “is God” is inherently unclear (because, oddly enough, of that innocent looking little word “is”) and does no justice to the rich history of debate on the status and relations between especially the Father and the Son of God. As we saw in round 5, 2nd & 3rd century guys thought Jesus was “divine” or shared the divine substance, but clearly distinguished between him and God, holding him to be lesser than God in several ways (power, glory, authority, time of existence, even goodness). Again, in the 4th c., as my co-blogger J.T. Paasch so clearly lays out, they didn’t identify Jesus and God. (See e.g. his concluding post.) True, evangelical spirituality involves thinking of Jesus as God, and evangelical apologists like Bowman speak out for “historic Christian orthodoxy”, but the realities of the catholic tradition are what they are, immovably laid down in black and white, and they refute the idea that the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is numerically identical to God. But we should already have known that – some things are true of one, that are not true of the other!

Some people  have wondered what my view of all this is. Some point later this summer, I’m intending to do a series about the evolution of my views on the Trinity, so stay tuned if you’re curious.

But on one level, my view is that both Bowman and Burke believe in God, and endeavor to follow God’s Son, in all aspects of their lives, in community with other disciples. I assume then, that both are children of God, reborn, destined for eternal life with God and his people. Yes, they have conflicting theories about God and his Son and Spirit/spirit, and they interpret the Bible somewhat differently. I assume that God doesn’t view either as an idolater or unbeliever, and that he looks at each a good bit less harshly than each (sometimes) looks at the other. Someday, over a nice beer ale, we’ll be able to sit in a pub somewhere with Jesus at the table, and he can enlighten either Bowman or Burke (or both – their positions are contrary, not contradictory – both can’t be true, but logically, both could be false) about where they went wrong. At least one will be profoundly embarrassed, probably shed a tear, but Jesus will be gentle, and if there is a “winner” he won’t rub it in, and in ten or maybe ten thousand years perhaps it’ll largely be forgotten.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that both views are true (that’d be too much paradox for any of us), or that they are equally reasonable, or that this debate doesn’t matter, or that one’s views on the Trinity have no important practical consequences. I firmly deny all these things.

What I’m saying is that this is an argument between siblings, and so is not like the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Our older brother, then, is at bottom a friend of both sides, and we should gladly follow him in this, whatever our theories may be. The contempt that so easily slips in – we should let it go. Argue on, brothers.

First, he tweaks his formula (here’s the previous version):

The doctrine of the Trinity is biblical if and only if all of the following propositions are biblical teachings:

1. One eternal uncreated being, the LORD God, alone created all things.
2. The Father is the LORD God.
3. The Son, who became the man Jesus Christ, is the LORD God.
4. The Holy Spirit is the LORD God.
5. The Father and the Son stand in personal relation with each other.
6. The Father and the Holy Spirit stand in personal relation with each other.
7. The Son and the Holy Spirit stand in personal relation with each other.

The only theological position that affirms all seven of the above propositions is the Trinity. However, each of these propositions finds affirmation in at least one or more non-Trinitarian doctrines.

I think the changes are verbal, not substantial. But he’s doing a couple of things here. First, he wants to show that he’s not presupposing any Trinity doctrine, but just inferring it from what the Bible clearly teaches. Thus, he makes the point that each of 1-7 is affirmed by at least one non-trinitarian theory. Second, he wants to show that his theory is most faithful to the Bible, of the available theories.

When I first saw this, I thought he was re-formulating to get around the problem that this theory is apparently contradictory. But I don’t think this is his aim, as at best, the contradiction is slightly papered over. If 5-7 are true, then f, s, and h must each be selves (capable of being in personal relations) and since by “personal relation” we assume Bowman means friendship with another (not with oneself), then f, s, and h must be three – none can be numerically identical to either of the others. And yet, 2-4 seem to say that each is numerically identical to one thing, the self who created (1). And things identical to the same thing, are identical to each other – ’cause they’re just one thing, after all. So, each of the three is and isn’t God; in my view, the battleship remains sunk.

BUT, to his credit Bowman puts up a manly and forthright defense of positive mysterianism (comment #3 here). He smacks down a misinterpretation of John 4:22, and makes the excellent point that it is irrational to dismiss a theory at the first sight of an apparent contradiction. One must be patient enough to work through things – oftentimes those contradictions turn out to be merely apparent.

Mind you, I don’t agree with positive mysterianism, and I’ve explained in gruesome detail what I think is wrong with it. Moreover, I think Bowman is mistaken in saying that catholic Christians have always held paradoxical views about God (e.g. in the NT “mysteries” have nothing to do with apparent contradictions), and he doesn’t seem to recognize the crucial difference between a belief which merely strikes one as implausible, and one which appears to be contradictory. Moreover, he attacks a straw men (that believable theological claims must be proven consistent, and that to believe that something is so one must understand how it is so). But he here expresses a view popular with a good many Christians, and with evangelicals in particular. And IF this defense is reasonable, then it is not enough to merely point out the apparent inconsistency of Bowman’s views. Point, Bowman.

In the rest of his closing statement, Bowman

• Gives a pretty fair summary of Burke’s biblical points.
• Insists that he’s shown his interpretations of the passages to be better, including some surprising ones, e.g. 1 Cor 8:6, which he reads to assert Jesus and the Father to be one self.
• Denounces as “slanderously false” Burke’s claim that trinitarianism somehow compromises the genuine humanity of Jesus. Although I think Bowman lost the debate about temptability, I think not enough in this debate has been said about the consistency or inconsistency of incarnation theories. Burke would need to show that on Bowman’s view of the incarnation (whatever that is), Jesus can’t be a man, or the right sort of man. Bowman points out in a comment (#7) that Burke hasn’t done enough to definitively show this.
• Objects to Burke’s claim that Jesus is the “literal” Son of God.
• Asserts that he creamed Burke re: Philippians 2.
• Ditto on John 1. I agree that Bowman points out some apparent inconsistencies in Burke’s position, but he seems blind to the difficulties of his own reading. (To wit: Isn’t Pr. 8 the background here, as well as some statements in the apocrypha about the non-literal incarnation God’s law? And what would it mean to say that the logos both is God and is with God? Burke has a natural answer here – Pr. 8:27, 30 And strangely, Bowman’s reading has “God” being applied, confusingly, in short order to the Father (“with God”) and to the Son (“was God”) and then quickly (v.2) back to the Father.)
• And the NT obviously teaches Christ’s existence before his conception. Plus, Bowman accuses Burke of quoting out of context “Mowinckel, who “shows that the Jewish ‘Son of Man’ was really (not ideally) pre-existent.” It seems that Dave was mistaken about Mowinckel’s overall position; but this sort of “gotcha” doesn’t advance the discussion, in my view, though it may delight partisans. On a close look, though, Burke didn’t say or imply that Mowinckel agreed with his overall view. It’s fair to point this out, but Burke has no obligation whatever to draw attention to the fact.
• Finally, Christ in various places receives “divine honors” and “divine names” – and not just in any old way, but in “religious contexts” (whatever those are!) which show that the disciples etc. took Jesus to be God himself. Religion scholar James McGrath shows up in the comments are pertinently asks what “religious” worship consists in, and what Bowman makes of an interesting OT text. (Comments 1, 10, 19, 67, 69)
• In a long, labored comment (#4) Bowman accuses Burke of deliberately distorting the “Athanasian” creed, when Burke says that it does and doesn’t teach three Lords. Bowman confidently pounces because the creed explicitly denies there are three Lords. Well, sure. But Burke wasn’t saying that the creed has an explicit contradiction (asserting “P” and asserting “not-P”) but rather that it is implicitly contradictory – explicitly saying there aren’t three, and yet implying that there are. I got Burke’s point. (More here.) Bowman should be slower to accuse his opponent of bad faith. Clear implicit contradictions are just as obviously false as explicit ones. Bowman also objects that Burke is begging the question, but Burke is only assuming self-evident truths, which one may reasonably assume in any context. Bowman needs to state and defend his controversial assumption of relative identity relations. Point Burke.
• In the rest of that long comment, Bowman tries to deduce the Trinity doctrine (understood paradoxically as above) from the Bible without using the word “person”. He asserts that the concept of a person is just the concept of “someone other than” one or more selves. (That can’t be right – the notion a solitary person/self isn’t contradictory.) In any case, as he reformulates “the” doctrine, he comes up with “There is one God, i.e. one divine Being, existing in three Persons… But now I notice that the word “Person” in the above statement cannot be identical in meaning to the word “Being” without resulting in a contradiction. Thus…” (he none too clearly asserts that in this context two things can be different “persons” but the same being). But why the sudden dislike for apparent contradictions? Embrace the mystery, my friend – don’t go rationalist on us at this late date.
• The comments on Bowman’s post are cantankerous and interesting. Bizarrely, at one point (#65) a Bowman partisan assures him that he should quit, that further discussion would be a waste of time (too many unitarians involved!) To his credit, Bowman discusses historical matters (#14-15, 63) and the objection about why the NT weren’t more up front with their views on the Trinity (#66 – to me, his answer is unsatisfying ). Points to Bowman for patient and thorough follow-through.

On the negative side, here’s Bowman’s final reply to McGrath re: worshiping Jesus as an agent of God:

…I agree that in a limited sense, the Israelite king (David or Solomon especially) functioned as God’s “agent” in that they ruled Israel on his behalf. I even agree that this motif establishes some precedent for the NT teaching that Christ rules from God’s throne. In the NT, however, what was a very limited, circumscribed agency with regard to the Israelite king is expanded to include Jesus Christ in the very identity of God.

In the last sentence Bowman repeats a confused trope from contemporary theology. But that’s not essential to his case; if Jesus just is (is numerically identical to) God, then we don’t need any talk of his being “in God’s identity”, whatever that might mean.

Though not every punch lands, Bowman fights hard and on many fronts in this round, and I’m awarding the round to him.

Score through all six rounds:

Bowman: 1
Burke: 3
draw: 2

Next time: some concluding reflections on the debate.

From reason: The Trinity doctrine, argues Burke, is inconsistent with itself. The “Athanasian” creed presents us with three, each of whom is a Lord, and yet insists that there is only one Lord. As some philosophers have pointed out, it is self-evident that if every F is a G, then there can’t be fewer Gs than Fs. So if every divine person is a god, then there can’t be fewer gods than divine persons. (Burke leaves out this: Why say that this creed presents us with three? Because each one differs from the others, having at least one feature the others lack.)

Since the Trinitarian Jesus is believed to be God, everything in Scripture which applies to God must necessarily apply to him.

Right. If the “two” are really one and the same, whatever is true of one must be true of “the other”. That is, nothing can differ from itself at any given time. Bowman does seem to identify Jesus and God, even while he thinks some things are true of one but not of the other. Point, Burke.

But note that many trinitarians to not identify Jesus and God. Almost no evangelical philosophers do, for instance, and arguably none to almost none of the ancient catholics do. Sharing a nature with isn’t the same as being numerically the same as, nor does the first obviously imply the second (unless the “nature” is a haecceity).

Unfortunately, this section features repeated distractions concerning words. Burke complains that “Trinitarianism requires unique definitions of words.” So what. Theories often require us to coin new definitions. Similarly, Burke demands evidence from the Bible that the word “person” should be used as trinitarians  use it. But the Bible doesn’t have rules about word definitions – at least not this one! Burke is trying to press the point that trinitarianism makes arbitrary and maybe inconsistent claims, and ones which ill fit the Bible, but these are not the ways to press points like that.

A more substantial point:

[Bowman] accepts the Trinity as “three persons”, when it suits him, but at other times he wants to count the three persons as one (ie. one Yahweh, or one Lord). He does this by effectively treating the three separate persons as a single unipersonal being, which is logically inconsistent…

I agree – it seems to me that like the rest of us, Bowman normally thinks of God as a magnificent self. But he doesn’t want four divine persons, so he sometimes thinks of God as… well, not a self, but some sort of thing which in some sense has three divine selves within it. But, Bowman finally addresses this in a comment in this last round… stay tuned.

From scripture: Mostly, Burke gives a good recap of his overall scriptural case. At one point, I think he goes too far:

Jesus and his apostles were adamant that everything people needed to know about him could be sourced directly from the OT. There was no “progressive revelation” about the Messiah; there was no new doctrine concerning his nature and identity; there was no change from OT to NT. (emphasis added)

I don’t think this is true. An important counterexample is Christ’s second coming, or the distinction between the first and second comings. I think it is a mistake to be hostile to any doctrine of progressive revelation. Why can’t something which is obscure later be made clear? e.g. what happens after death, how many times the messiah will come, how God will bring in people from all nations to his family. I think Burke rejects progressive revelation because he thinks it requires the later revelation to contradict the earlier. But the later might instead be correcting not what the earlier says or implies, but rather mistaken conclusions people are liable to draw from what it says and implies. e.g. that when one is all the way dead, one has ceased to exist

He effectively presses his point about Acts, which arguably conspicuously lacks any teaching of the “fully divinity” of Jesus or of any tripersonal God.

But where is the uproar [in Acts] against the notion of a Messiah who is also a God-man? Where is the backlash against a triune God? There is no such uproar; there is no such backlash; there is no outcry against Trinitarian concepts. On the Trinity and the deity of Christ, the preaching record and the Jewish response are both silent. In light of the Jews’ response to the Gospel message, this is inexplicable unless proto-Trinitarian doctrines were not preached at all. And if they were not preached, why weren’t they preached?

Irritatingly, this section has some scattershot charges – that trinitarians commit a lot of fallacies, that their readings of the Bible are convoluted, that their readings are marred by their love for their theory, which they always presuppose. This is just a fancy way of saying “look how ridiculous they are” – and it is about as effective as that charge. Best to stay on the subject at hand – the substance of Bowman’s case, not the alleged shortcomings of trinitarians in general.

In reiterating his case, I a few times noticed that he overstates it. Thus,

We saw that throughout the OT, God’s Holy Spirit is described as something that belongs to Him, like a property or a power. We saw that the NT follows this model exactly, without deviating in any way from OT teaching. There is no new revelation about the identity of the Holy Spirit.

This point can be argued, but it is too much to say that the “NT follows this model [of the Holy Spirit as an attribute] exactly”.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.” (Acts 5:3-4, NIV, emphases added)

As I explained before, this usage of “the Holy Spirit” (as a singular referring term, referring to the Father) needn’t bother a unitarian. Overstating the case makes it easy for one’s opponent to reject it out of hand.

Moving on, Burke asks some pertinent questions:

Why did God allow His chosen people to believe He is only one divine person instead of three, right up until the Christian era? Why did He conceal His triune identity? What was the rationale behind this divine deception? When and where was the new revelation first made clear? Rob claims it is “implicit”, but why only “implicit”? All the other key apostolic doctrines are explicitly preached. How can divinely inspired church leaders fail to provide an explicit teaching of the triune God if that is what they genuinely believe? Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would lead them into all truth (John 16:13); why didn’t it lead them to Trinitarianism?

I believe that Bowman stonewalls on all these through the whole debate. (Have I missed any answers?) I assume his view is just that we can’t understand God’s ways. But if so, better he should say and defend that answer. He loses points by refusing to answer. The audience he’s used to may not think much of them, but this is a more mixed audience.

On to history: Burke argues that the earliest material is “biblical unitarian”, while much (most) 1st century catholic theologians are subordinationist unitarians. He holds that:

Historically, doctrine always develops from the minimal to the complex, evolving as it is exposed to new influences and adapting in response to perceived heresies. Thus, the simplest doctrinal statements are more likely to be the earliest and most authentic. It is therefore significant that the earliest Christian creedal statements are Unitarian.

Is trinitarian theology, or subordinationist unitarianism more complex than humanitarian unitarianism? Maybe (it may depend on which Trinity theory we have in mind – some professed trinitarians simply hold that there’s one god with three ways of living, and that at least as simple as biblical unitarianism, isn’t it?). Are the early statements unitarian? One might not want to say they are explicitly so – as they are not written in reaction to any Trinity theory – but rather that they are compatible with, and a good fit with unitarianism, as they seem to assume that God and the Father are numerically the same. But if Bowman is right, we would not expect them to be this way.

In his summation, Burke urges us to lay aside the docetic thinking which dogs trinitarianism and embrace a Jesus who really shared our lot. Further,

…Christianity began as a Jewish religion. …Biblical Unitarianism calls for a return to those Jewish roots. I urge you to rediscover Israel’s God; the God Whom Jesus himself worshipped; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — not the God of Justin Martyr, Arius, or Basil the Great.

Some will wonder what is so important about “getting back to our Jewish roots”? I mean, Judaism is a different religion, is it not?

More importantly, don’t these last three (or at least the last two – see below) also worship the god of Abe and Jesus? I think Burke oversells his theory, suggesting that unless you buy this, you may be worshiping another god. How likely is this, I wonder, for current day Christians?

Suppose I have a friend who thinks I (1) have huge muscles, (2) speak Chinese in addition to English, (3) love the New England Patriots, and (4) am half space alien. (He’s kind of a weird guy.) This friend is mistaken on all four counts – but he’s still my friend. These false beliefs about me may throw up somewhat of a barrier to our friendship, in certain situations. I’ll wish that he was better informed, but I’m not going to reject him for his false beliefs about me, even if he’s culpable for them. There are limits to this – it’s hard to see how I could be friends with someone who thought I was a wallaby, a donut, or a pair of socks.

Justin Martyr and Arius think, like Burke, that the one true god is the Father. So… they believed in Israel’s God, no? Even if they think he created the world by means of a newly formed, divine helper or two. (Basil is another case… if  I understand him, he identifies God with an ineffable, simple divine nature.)

Again, consider Bowman, if Burke is right. Bowman worships the Father, considering him to be the one true god. That he, if Burke is right, is confused about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, doesn’t take this fact away. Doesn’t Bowman love the things God loves, in particular, Jesus? Are Bowman’s beliefs inconsistent? If so, this isn’t a good thing, but it won’t prevent his worshiping God and serving him.

In sum, Burke recaps what has been a pretty strong case. But he makes some points which, though they delight the choir (other unitarians), either beg the question (assume what needs proving), or are not very relevant when debating a non-unitarian. These too aggressive reaches are a debating mistake; one thinks one is going in for the kill, but in reality, hostile and some neutral listeners tune out.

Next time: Bowman’s closing statement.

Buckle your seatbelts – this post isn’t a quickie.

First, to review – in this whole debate, Burke has argued that all the NT writers were humanitarians. But if this is so, one would expect there to be a bulk of humanitarian unitarians in the times immediately after the apostles. Here, as we saw last time, Bowman pounces. All the main 2nd century theologians, he urges are confused or near trinitarians. (Last time, I explained that this is a dubious play on the word “trinitarian”. My term for them is non-Arian subordinationists.) There’s not a trace, Bowman urges, of any 1st c. humanitarians – with the exception of some off-base heretical groups, like the Ebionites.

We’re talking about mainly the 100s CE here, going into the first half of the 200s. The general picture, as I see it, is this. Early in the century, we find the “apostolic fathers” basically echoing the Bible, increasingly including the NT (the NT canon was just starting to be settled on during this century). However, some of them seem to accept some kind of pre-existence for Christ (in God’s mind? or as a divine self alongside God?), and they’re often looser, more Hellenized in their use of “god” (so even though as in the NT the Father is the God of the Jews, the creator, Jesus is more frequently than in the NT called “our God” etc.) But clearly – no equally divine triad, no tripersonal God, and in most, no clear assertion of the eternality of the Son. In the second half of the century, starting with Justin Martyr, we find people expounding  a kind of subordinationism obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish Platonic theologian who was a rough contemporary of Jesus. How do we know this? They use his metaphors and adopt some of his interpretations of the OT – and like him, under pressure of Greek philosophy, they were very worried about taking parts of the OT literally, and about sort of shielding God from the corruption of the material world. (This is a big subject – I’ll post on Philo another time. But for the intensely curious, there is a very helpful discussion in Norton.)

Is Bowman right about the total absence of evidence for 2nd c. humanitarians? I don’t think so, though this is a dark subject. We have to remember that much of what he have is works by highly educated guys – Tertullian, Justin, Irenaeus, Origen loom large – who are tireless polemicists for the catholic (aka “proto-Catholic”) movement. It is not clear to what degree the views of a guy like this, at any given time, reflect the views of catholics all together of that time. In this post, some general thoughts, and a few bits of relevant evidence.

First, a Christian like Bowman (and also, like Burke, or like me for that matter) has no good reason to consider proto-Catholics the only real Christians in this era – that is, that group of Christians united behind the bishops, who as the century went on increasingly claimed apostolic authority for themselves collectively. Why? Because we all think that they were off base on many things  – notably the authority of bishops, but also things like baptismal regeneration, (later on) infant baptism, the claim that Plato got all his truth from Moses, universalism in the case of Origen, etc. Thus, when surveying the opinions of genuinely saved folk in the first c., it is too quick to dismiss the views of any non-catholic. Thus, it is not clear that the Nazarenes and Ebionites are irrelevant to this dispute. But still, let’s assume they are irrelevant.

In the rest of this post, I’ll cite 3 pieces of evidence that there were humanitarian unitarians in the 1st c. – possibly, a lot of them, within the broad realm of the catholic movement.

First, an exchange from Justin‘s mid 1st c. Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (which was discussed by Biddle, Christie, and Priestley) ch. 48-9:

And [the Jew] Trypho said, “…Resume the discourse… For some of it appears to me to be paradoxical, and wholly incapable of proof. For when you say that this Christ existed as God before the ages, then that He submitted to be born and become man, yet that He is not man of man, this [assertion] appears to me to be not merely paradoxical, but also foolish.”

And I [Justin] replied to this, “I know that the statement does appear to be paradoxical, especially to those of your race… Now assuredly, Trypho,” I continued,”[the proof] that this man is the Christ of God does not fail, though I be unable to prove that He existed formerly [i.e. before his conception] as Son of the Maker of all things, being God, and was born a man by the Virgin. But since I have certainly proved that this man is the Christ of God, whoever He be, even if I do not prove that He pre-existed, and submitted to be born a man of like passions with us, having a body, according to the Father’s will; in this last matter alone is it just to say that I have erred, and not to deny that He is the Christ, though it should appear that He was born man of men, and [nothing more] is proved [than this], that He has become Christ by election. For there are some, my friends,” I said, “of our race [i.e. Christians], who admit that He is Christ, while holding Him to be man of men; with whom I do not agree, nor would I, even though most of those who have [now] the same opinions as myself should say so; since we were enjoined by Christ Himself to put no faith in human doctrines, but in those proclaimed by the blessed prophets and taught by Himself.”

And Trypho said, “Those who affirm him to have been a man, and to have been anointed by election, and then to have become Christ, appear to me to speak more plausibly than you who hold those opinions which you express. For we all expect that Christ will be a man [born] of men, and that Elijah when he comes will anoint him. But if this man appear to be Christ, he must certainly be known as man[born] of men; but from the circumstance that Elijah has not yet come, I infer that this man is not He[the Christ].” (emphases added)

There are a couple of interesting things here. First, Justin concedes that Jesus can be the Messiah without his being divine or pre-existent – those points are independent of each other, and nothing about being Messiah logically implies being divine or pre-existing. So he insists that his arguments that Jesus is the Jewish messiah will work even if he can’t show Jesus to have pre-existed, or to be anything but a “man of men”, i.e. not Virgin-born, but with two human parents.  Second, Justin seems willing to concede that people who deny his logos theory may yet be Christians – catholic Christians, we assume. Third, there’s a translation problem in the last sentence of the first paragraph – on some renderings, such as the one cited by Priestley, it sounds like Justin might be grudgingly conceding the popularity of the humanitarian view.

I do not agree with them, nor should be prevailed upon by ever so many who hold that opinion… (Priestley, p. 6.)

And a unitarian translator has,

To whom I do not assent, though the greatest part of them should say that they have been of the same opinion. (Christie, p. 209)

But the latest translation I’ve seen, by a trinitarian, essentially agrees with the first above. Priestley notes that Irenaeus also declines to condemn humanitarians who accept the virgin birth. Priestley observes,

This language has all the appearance of an apology for an opinion contrary to the general and prevailing one… [he] even speaks of the pre-existence of Christ… as a doubtful one, and by no means a necessary article of Christian faith.” (Priestley, pp. 6-7)

By itself, this doesn’t count for much - perhaps Justin is merely over-eager to concede all he can for the sake of argument.

But consider a second piece of evidence, noted by Christie (pp. 211-2) – a passage from Tertullan’s Against Praxeas, ch. 3:

The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world’s plurality of gods to the one only true God; not understanding that, although He is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with His own [economy] . The numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity; whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being destroyed, that it is actually supported by it. They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-eminently the credit of being worshipers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered constitute the truth. We, say they, maintain the Monarchy (or, sole government of God). And so, as far as the sound goes, do even Latins (and ignorant ones too) pronounce the word in such a way that you would suppose their understanding of the [Monarchy] was as complete as their pronunciation of the term.

What Justin is noting, is that average pew dwellers were in his day constantly objecting to the logos theology. Why? Presumably because logos theology was (1) new, (2) never before popular (at least outside of elite circles), and (3) because they understood their “rule of faith” to be inconsistent with it – specifically, its monotheism. What is the rule of faith? Probably, something like a primitive, shorter form of what we call the Apostles’ Creed. Countless unitarians have pointed out that the so-called Apostles’ Creed seems unitarian, identifying God with the Father, and may reflect a (mid? early?) 1st c. consensus. Tertullian in his On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 1 says:

The rule of faith… is altogether one, alone immoveable and irreformable; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary…

Finally, what to my mind is the most important of the evidence: monarchians. Back in the 18th c., patristic heavyweight Nathaniel Lardner opined that at least some of the so-called “patripassians” were in fact humanitarian unitarians. These Christians – such as Noetus, Praxeas (possibly a pseudonym for Callistus I, bishop of Rome) and later on Sabellius and Paul of Samosata,

…were grouped in Rome, and had a dominant influence over the affairs of the Roman church, as can be seen by the manner in which Pope Callistus regarded the defense of the Monarchian cause as simply the preservation of the integrity of the ancient Roman tradition in the face of new innovations from the Logos theologians (especially Hippolytus). (“Monarchianism” in The SCM Press A-Z of Patristic Theology, p. 226, emphases added)

In other words, the Monarchians claimed that their view of Christ was the ancient, majority opinion within catholicism, at least at Rome (and like all catholics, they claimed their tradition to be apostolic, and geographically uniform). What was their view of Christ? As best I can tell – at least for Praxeas and Noetus, that he was a man,  the messiah, virgin born but not pre-existent or divine. I’ve scoured Tertullian’s Against Praxeas and Hippolytus’ Against the Heresy of One Noetus, in which they blast their opponents for holding the Father and Son to be one and the same. (I think I know, by the way, how they’d object to Bowman’s christology!) But if you look carefully at the statements and arguments attributed to their targets (Praxeas, Noetus) they sound roughly like the sorts of things a humanitarian unitarian would say! It’s not too hard, in my view, to spot the confusions of their critics.

One is this. The “monarchians” read the “logos” of John 1 as being not an agent alongside the Father at creation, but just God’s wisdom. The logos for them  just is (a mode or attribute of) the Father. Now, what is the divine element of in the man who was crucified, which is responsible for his divine actions, such as his miracles, and moreover just is the Son of God? Tertullian thinks: obviously, the logos. But these idiots think the logos is the Father – so they must think that Christ is the Father! They must be “patripassians” (Tertullian invents this taunt) – holding that the Father suffered on the cross. In other words, Tertullian reasons that they’re doomed by this argument:

1. l = f
2. l = s
3. Therefore, f = s.

Tertullian thinks they should deny 1 like him, but what he doesn’t see is that they would deny 2. This was hard for the logos theorists to get their heads around – they were so fixated on the ancient, quasi-divine logos, instrument of the Father’s creation, that the man Jesus (either the complete human nature or the conglomerate of the logos plus a human nature) was of less interest. Indeed, the massively influential logos theologian Irenaeus holds that our salvation was effected by the incarnation of the logos – not so much, it seems, by what Christ did during his earthly ministry!

There’s a lot more that would need to be said to justify my controversial reading of these obscure figures, whose writings are almost totally lost.

But if I’m right that many or most of the so-called “monarchians” were in fact some sort of humanitarian unitarians (which would make them modalists about the Spirit and the logos – but not about the Son of God, whom they took to be a virgin born man – but not “modalists” as theologians usually define it nowadays), and they were correct in asserting themselves to be old and numerous, then Bowman’s assertion that there’s no evidence of (any decent number of) humanitarian unitarians in the 1st century is mistaken. And, Burke has more support for his view – not only subordinationist unitarians, but humanitarian ones, nowadays called “biblical unitarians” were there in the 1st c.

Both sides fought valiantly this round. I thought Bowman landed some punches on the triadic passages. Burke did better on the temptation of Christ issue. Both sides ran into some trouble with the concept of identity. Burke raised a number of issues, whereas Bowman put all his eggs into one (important) basket. Both fought valiantly in the comments, including more issues than I could comment on. I’m calling this one a draw.

Score up through round 5:

Bowman: 0
Burke: 3
draw: 2

Next up: the sixth and final round.

1. 2nd c. catholic theology was predominantly subordinationist.
2. If the apostles had taught the Trinity, this wouldn’t have been so.
3. Therefore, the apostles did not teach the Trinity.

In a long comment (#23) Bowman objects,

For some reason… anti-Trinitarians think it is bad news for the doctrine of the Trinity if second-century and third-century church fathers were not consistently Trinitarian in their theology, but that it is not bad news for them if their particular non-Trinitarian brand of theology is completely missing from those centuries.

It is true that many of the church fathers in the second and third centuries held to some form of ontological subordinationism. However, a fair-minded reading of these church fathers shows that this was a deviation within a generally trinitarian theology. They were not Arians, and by that I mean that their theology was distinctively different from Arianism and far closer to Trinitarianism. …in general what we find are theologies that might fairly be described as defective or immature forms of Trinitarianism. None of them is anything close to a Unitarian. None of them is Arian, though as you correctly state some of them have tendencies in their theology that one could describe as leaning that direction.

…it is a history of Trinitarianism, from the moment the apostle John died right through the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon and beyond. It is a history in which the belief that Christ had existed since before creation as God was almost universally accepted among religious groups professing to be Christian. It is a history in which almost everyone agreed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are divine. And it is a history in which Unitarianism is glaringly absent. (emphases added)

Yes, pretty much every historically informed unitarian who comes along reads the “apostolic fathers” and the extant mid to late 2nd c. catholic theologians, and finds support there. For example: Biddle, Clarke, Christie, Norton, Lindsey, Priestley, Webster, Lamson.

Why? A unitarian is one who identifies (considers numerically identical) God and the Father, and who doesn’t so identify the Son or Spirit. In other words, for a unitarian, God just is a perfect self – the Father – and he doesn’t have any “persons” within him. Whatever it is to be “fully divine”, unitarians hold that there is one such self. Unitarians differ among themselves about whether (1) the Son pre-existed his conception, and whether (2) the Holy Spirit is a person/self. Subordinationists (sometimes misleadingly called “Arians”) answer yes to both of these, while humanitarians answer no to both. Subordinationists disagree among themselves about whether there was ever a time when the Son and Spirit were not – that is, whether or not their generation and procession were in time.

In my list above, Biddle, Clarke, and Webster are subordinationists. Christie, Norton, Priestley, and Lindsey were humanitarians. Christie and Priestley were first subordinationists, but after thinking about it more, switched to humanitarian unitarianism. This was pretty common in the late 18th to early 19th c. Also common were the two sorts of unitarians getting along fairly well. The chief point for both is that the Father just is God – they’re concerned to save monotheism, and to preserve the unique honor of the Father. They agree that in some sense or other the Son exists because of, and so is subordinate (ontologically and functionally) to the Father. And they unite in holding especially the “Athanasian” creed sort of trinitarianism as unscriptural and contradictory.

I note that this was all common knowledge in educated circles c. 1800 in America and elsewhere. That it is not now, is a testimony to the in-house mindset of Catholic and Protestant academic theologians of the last 100 years or so. They are, for whatever reasons, just not interested in these debates. This attitude is deeply entrenched among today’s academic theologians. Being trained in philosophy, this mystifies me; we’re taught to always look high and low for the strongest arguments for theories, and also that you don’t really understand a theory until you try out some really tough objections on it, and see how it holds up (i.e. how holders of that theory could reply). As the proverb says, the first one to speak seems to have a slam-dunk case, until his opponent comes along and cross-examines him.

Back to unitarians. They look at the 2nd century catholics, and see people who appear to identify God and the Father. And they don’t speak of God as in any sense containing, including, or being composed of the three persons. They’re unitarians, and because of their logos theology speculations, they’re subordinationist, not humanitarian unitarians. Right? (The 19th c. humanitarian Lamson is especially forceful on these points.)

Wrong, says Bowman. They were in fact immature, somewhat confused trinitarians. Or maybe, almost-trinitarians. Not only does he think this, but he thinks it is pretty obvious – something any unbiased look will reveal. Why? They weren’t “Arians”, and their views are more like trinitarians’.

But that they were not Arians is irrelevant – 4th. c. Arianism and some sort of trinitarianism are not the only possible views. We also have the unitarians who think Jesus to be eternally generated, or who hold a logos theory which may feature an eternal Son (if it is possible that a self used to be a property). Why does Bowman think that they are close to being trinitarians, or are even defective or immature trinitarians? Looking at his quotations, I don’t know, except that he’s impressed by the same sorts of triadic mentions of the Three as we find in the NT. Considered by itself, that’s pretty weak.

But let’s try to help him out. Why consider these guys proto- or almost- or defective trinitarians? I can think of two reasons. First, that their views were part of a historical sequence which inevitably led to full-blown trinitarianism. Second, they hold all or most of the essential beliefs of trinitarianism. (Commenters: are there other reasons?)

On the first point: this development doesn’t look inevitable. Read (for beginners) When Jesus Became God, or (for the patient) Hanson’s book. If you want to say it was inevitable, you should go Catholic, and hold that God infallibly guides the bishops, who possess the mantle of the apostles. I assume Bowman doesn’t want to go there.

On the second point: are any of these essential to “the” Trinity doctrine?

• That the three are equally divine.
• That God is tripersonal.
• That the Son and Spirit always were.

I think Bowman would agree that all three are essential to it. But the first two are uncontroversially absent from this early material, and the third is arguably so, for most of the late 2nd c. and early 3rd c. catholics (though arguably not for Origen). One has to be careful, because the late 2nd c. logos theologians say a lot of things that can mislead you into thinking they hold the first two points. They hold that the Father’s divine nature (or a portion of it) was by him, sort of spread out or distributed into two other, new persons, prior to or at the time of creation. So the Son and Spirit “share his nature”, but while he’s divine because of himself, they are so because of him. As to the second point, the one God just is the Father, and so for them God is not tripersonal. This divine nature thing may be in some sense tripersonal, but they don’t put it that way. In sum, starting with Tertullian, they talk of a “Trinity” but this consists of: God, God’s Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Trinity isn’t God, but rather, God’s a member of it. (And the two other members may be called “God” as well.)

Just as a quick illustration of the first point (that they don’t hold the three as equally divine) Origen – the most educated and one of the most influential of this bunch – holds that

…he, who would pray as he ought, must not pray to him who himself prays, but to Him whom Jesus our Lord taught us to invoke in prayer (namely, the Father)… it is not according to reason for a brother to be addressed in prayer by those who are glorified by the same Father. (De Orat. 15, quoted in Lamson, 185)

They generally try to soothe concerns about monotheism by emphasizing the primacy of the Father. The later ones, and less clearly the earlier, believe that in some sense Jesus pre-existed, and many call him “God”, “our god”, “my god”, etc. – which isn’t as surprising as some of us assume. The later ones speculate on how the Son may have a divine nature because of the Father (as opposed to the Father, who is divine of himself).

If Bowman thinks Origen and Justin etc. are confused trinitarians, then he must think Clarke is one as well. I encourage him to read Clarke, and decide if he really wants to maintain this. If so, he’ll be in disagreement with most of the trinitarians of Clarke’s day. Clarke spins his subordinationism as the true, early catholic version of the doctrine (and he’s very well read in those 2nd & 3rd c. guys, and quotes them at length, both in the original languages and with his own English translations), but he’s against the Athanasian creed, and would deny #4 and #5 of Bowman’s six propositions. For both Clarke and Bowman, Origen, Irenaeus, etc. are “trinitarians” – but for Clarke, they are the truest kind, not an inferior kind. Clarke holds that the Son is divine  – he has all essential features of divinity, but aseity, for he eternally exists by an ineffable act of the Father’s will. Same with the Spirit. But the one god, for him is the Father Almighty – just as with these 2nd century guys.

So, is unitarianism glaringly absent in this period? No – the subordinationist kind is there in force, esp. post-Justin Martyr. Bowman insists that it is really “trinitarian” or close to it; I say, let him embrace Clarke as a near or immature trinitarian brother, or else admit that he’s merely spinning with the label “trinitarian”. If, depending on the writer, 2 of the 3 or all 3 of the essential points of “the” Trinity doctrine, we’re just polemicizing in insisting that the guy is a “trinitarians” or nearly so.

But what about Burke’s kind – what I call humanitarian unitarianism, and what goes by the name “biblical unitarianism” in recent days? Is that wholly absent? Tune in next time.

What about Burke’s argument, at the top of this post? I’ve argued that 1 is true. 2 is plausible (still, I think more needs to be said about it). But then, it is plausible that the argument is sound. Or maybe the argument should be weakened with a “Probably,” at the start of premise 2, and a “probably” after the “Therefore” in the conclusion. Understood this way, the argument would just put pressure on the NT reader to come up with a non-trinitarian reading of the apostles’ doctrine; this is what Burke is doing.

How can Bowman respond? He could accept the argument – that 2nd c. subordinationism was unlikely, but nonetheless it is just too clear that the apostles taught the Trinity. (Not a plausible line – philosophers call this “biting the bullet“.) Or, he could challenge premise 2. Would he be willing to do this? And on what grounds? A story about the corruption of Christian theology by Platonism? Or…?

To do this, he considers a dozen triadic passages, in which the Three are all mentioned together in quick succession. Last time, I mulled over his treatment of the “Great Commission”  passage. This time, a few others, and I take a crack at another explanation of this triadic language.

First, as I look at Bowman’s interpretations, some of them strongly suggest that he thinks that asserting the divinity of each just is asserting each to be numerically identical to God. I looked into this more last time, but briefly, this won’t fly, as it’ll make the persons identical to one another. So it is not clear, even if his expositions are right, that really support an orthodox Trinity theory.

Second, I reiterate that Bowman does a good job here, assembling a dozen important passages, in which it is impossible to ignore the triadic language. Suppose the doctrine of the Trinity is just this vague claim: “there are three co-equal persons in God”. If that is true, that would explain why these three are often mentioned together, in a way which can suggest they are on an equal footing. I said last time that any unitarian is obligated to explain these triadic statements in a way which is both compatible with unitarianism, and which is independently motivated (in can’t be that the only appeal of the reading is that it saves one’s theology).

Here’s Bowman’s treatment of one such text:

1 Corinthians 12:4-6

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord.
There are varieties of activities, but the same God who works all things in all.”

The deliberate parallelism of these three lines practically speaks for itself. If a Jew unfamiliar with Christianity read these lines alone, he would certainly understand “the same Spirit,” “the same Lord,” and “the same God” to be three synonymous expressions for the same Creator. We know from the immediate context that the one whom Paul identifies here as “the same Lord” is Jesus (v. 3). Paul clearly attributes personhood to the Spirit, whose work of gifting believers Paul details in verses 7-10, concluding in verse 11, “But one and the same Spirit works all these things [panta tauta energei], distributing to each one individually just as he wills.” Paul here in verse 11 uses the same language for the Spirit’s working that he used in verse 6 for God’s working (“who works all things in all,” ho energ?n ta panta en pasin). Thus, Paul can speak interchangeably about what the Spirit, the Lord, and God do in relation to spiritual gifts, while still distinguishing the three from one another. We have here at the very least an implicit Trinitarianism.

Bowman is too confident here, in my view. He’s saying that a first century Jew would certainly read those three terms as co-referring. But if a first century Jew would assume some things true of one which are not true of the others, this isn’t so. “The Lord” here is Jesus – a man. And a Jew of that (or any) era would assume that neither God nor the Spirit of God are men. About the personhood of the Spirit – looking at v. 6 along with v. 11 suggests that the “Spirit” which distributes gifts at will just is God. But as I explained before, a unitarian can concede this (which is consistent with holding the Spirit-talk is sometimes about an aspect of God or action of God), and moreover, identifying the Spirit with God isn’t going to help the trinitarian get his three persons within God.

Still, what might a unitarian say about passages like these?

We can get a clue by looking at another passage: Ephesians 4:1-16 (read the whole thing). What is going on here? Paul is forcefully arguing for Christian unity. We know from the whole NT that there were considerable factionalizing forces the apostles fought against. Misguided loyalty to one apostle over others, Judaizers, teachers with “secret knowledge” foisting a holier-than-thou attitude towards those without knowledge, renegade prophets, big personalities. Here’s the crucial bit: “…There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—  one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” As Bowman notes, here is a seven-fold formula, in opposition to the more common threefold one.

So, here’s an alternate explanation which unitarians can offer – actually, any Bible reader can accept it, irrespective of their views on the Trinity: the threefold formulas are a shorthand, something like a slogan – one God, one Lord, one Spirit – asserting the unified nature of all Christian assemblies, or all Christians – they all worship one God, have been saved by one Savior, and sealed, empowered, etc. by one Spirit. They’ve got one hope, one baptism, and so on – they all stand on one footing as a new people, with Christ as their head. One could say it is a standard, short (but expandable) list of fundamental church-unifying factors. It doesn’t imply that the named factors are literally divine, or that the are the same in some metaphysical sense (i.e. equally divine). These statements are compatible with those claims, but don’t imply them. And if my reading is on track, one should not infer the “full divinity” of the listed factors, or their being in some sense “within” God or the divine nature.

But why focus on those three? “One God” unites Christians in excluding polytheists, or even monotheists who don’t worship the God of the Jews. “One Lord” unities Christians as standing behind one man, having one immediate boss (“Lord”) – Jesus – and so not divided among this or that teacher, prophet, apostle, etc. “One Spirit” – unites Christians as against those influenced by the spirits which in the apostolic view inspire, control, and oppress the non-Christian world. And it also prevents the elevation of one gift  over another – it’s all from one Spirit (or one spirit) – God (or God’s).

Mentioning these three, in that order, sort of re-iterates the story of the gospels and Acts. It is one God at work, first by sending his Son, then (after his Son’s resurrection and ascension) by sending his Spirit. So this triadic language is a way of encapsulating, as it were, this whole story of God’ work in these last days.

Will this explanation fly? Is this compatible with unitarianism? Yes. (And really, with any views on the Trinity.) Is it arbitrary? No – it seems well-motivated. Not every such passage is one where Christian unity is at the forefront, but Paul is much-concerned with Christian unity, and he needn’t be read as dropping hints that only a good bit later would be taken as implicit creedal trinitarianism. This unity doctrine, expressed by a triple slogan, seems to a common thread in all known apostolic teaching. Moreover, this explanation keeps us within a mid-1st c. thought world, in which (arguably) theories of divine triunity are as yet unknown, and in which the one God of Israel just is the Father of Jesus – not a complex of the Father and two others. This is an important virtue – letting the texts speak on their own terms, and not anachronistically reading our concerns back into them. Moreover, the explanation is charitable to the NT authors, and is simple.

It bears repeating that one can accept this explanation and be a trinitarian. One must just concede that these triadic formulas don’t imply your version of the Trinity doctrine. They might still be part of a broader set of data which you think your Trinity theory best explains.

Back to scoring: Bowman needs to show that his explanation of these triadic passages is the best. He hasn’t tackled one like that sketched above. And his own explanation at best seems to require a troublingly vague formulation of “the” Trinity doctrine. And at worst, his explanation implies that anything like a mainstream current Trinity doctrine is false, as it simply identifies all the persons and God, and doesn’t show how the former in some sense compose the latter. Still, he gains some points simply by facing an important sort of objection, and for forcefully presenting important phenomena which demand explanation, and for which he arguably has one. How will Burke’s round 5 compare?

In the preceding three rounds of this debate, I have argued that the person of Jesus Christ existed as God prior to the creation of the world and that the Holy Spirit is also a divine person. If my argument up to this point has been successful, I have thoroughly refuted the Biblical Unitarian position and established two key elements of the doctrine of the Trinity. Add to these two points the premises that there is only one God who existed before creation and that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the only theological position in the marketplace of ideas that is left is the doctrine of the Trinity. Since these are all premises that Biblical Unitarianism accepts, I have not defended them here. (emphases added)

I’m tired of pointing out the inconsistency of what Bowman is urging. I’m capable of hearing the many ways theorists smooth away apparent inconsistencies (making subtle distinctions), but other than a quick gesture (I think in Round 1), I hear none of these familiar notes from him. This is just to say – he’s a resolute positive mysterian. Briefly, Father, Son and Spirit are numerically three, as they qualitatively differ from one another. But also, Bowman seems to think, each of them is numerically the same as God. This is inconsistent, because the “is” of numerical sameness is transitive – if f = g, and g = s, then f = s (compare: the concept of “bigger than”). Also, it seems that he thinks Father and Son to the same god, and also, since this god just is a person (hence “who” above), they are the same person as each other. And, of course, also they are not. Sigh. Let’s stick with the vague “threefoldness” claim I started with.

Bowman ignores what I call a kind of subordinationism in which the Son and Spirit are (take your pick) eternally generated, or created before the creation of the cosmos (this assuming that deity doesn’t imply aseity). This is in some sense within the “marketplace of ideas”, and is, unlike Bowman’s view, seemingly consistent – they, like Burke, identify God with the Father (and not with the other two). Moreover, some important unitarians like Clarke and Biddle have held a view like this. I suppose his reasoning is that the only kind of subordination really out there, is that maintained by Jehovah’s Witnesses, in which the Spirit is not a self. In this debate, I think it is fair to set this option aside, as Burke isn’t defending it. But speaking of those early modern unitarians, Bowman’s discussion got me curious about how they read the passage we focus on below, so I pulled some books off my shelf and found some interesting comments there.

Back to his main aim; he discusses a selection of twelve out of what he says are “over fifty clear examples” of texts in which there is a “‘triadic pattern‘ in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (or similar terms) are mentioned together. (Interestingly, Clarke has a chapter on such texts – by his count, 41.)

Bowman is certainly right about this – this phenomenon is interesting (it is far more than a stylistic tick of some one writer), and demands explanation. He might have added that unitarians have a tendency to treat each passage in isolation – holding that none by itself implies a Trinity doctrine. But they need to do more than that – they need to have a competing, and better explanation of this phenomenon. Will Burke offer one?

Bowman leads with what many would take as the strongest or most important such passage: Matthew 29:18, in which Jesus tells us to baptize “in [or into] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.  It’s importance, Bowman urges, is confirmed by

…the many anti-Trinitarians over the years who have grasped at the straw that the fourth-century writer Eusebius supposedly testified to an original form of the text in which Jesus said to baptize disciples “in my name” instead of what we find in all of the Greek manuscripts. Many continue to repeat this claim today, though it is hard to find any contemporary scholars who will support it

This is a bit of a distraction, since as Bowman point out, Burke doesn’t argue this way. But I found some interesting things in looking into this.

First, the authors he’s referring to in their book (p. 455) give quotes from Eusebius, refs and all – this isn’t some sort of rumor. (However they don’t seem to give the ref(s) relevant to what Price alleges below.) Second, they point out something which Bowman well knows, and which United Pentecostals never tire of pointing out – which is that baptism in Acts is never described in any threefold way. This is a bit strange if the usual text is accurate, but in his book Bowman properly points out that Acts never gives any ritual formula for baptism.

Bowman no doubt considers this argument desperate because no extant early Greek texts have the non-triple reading. But is it hard to find scholars who endorse it?

I didn’t find it too hard. Robert Price translates the verse: “…train all the gentiles as disciples, baptizing them in my name.” (p. 176, emphasis added) In a footnote he explains,

Eusebius tells us he saw copies of Matthew pre-dating the Council of Nicea that had “in my name” rather than the now-familiar trinitarian “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” It is hard to resist the inference that a Nicene baptism formula, reflecting the newly minted doctrine of the trinity, was inserted into the text from that time on.”

Granted, Price is way out past the left of left-wing / liberal Bible scholarship. But he’s certainly for that reason no “biblical unitarian”.

The triple-reading is in the Didache 7:5, which is universally held to be pre-200 CE. But so is the simpler wording. (9:5) Is it there because it was in Matthew, or the reverse? It’s hard to be sure. I guess I’d stick with the manuscripts, though. It is possible that Eusebius was mistaken – it may have been in his day that much was being made of that text by the “pro-Nicene” crowd, and someone for polemical reasons or to harmonize with Acts changed the reading to “in my name” – which Eusebius then saw and mistook for an earlier copy.

Bowman accuses such unitarians of inconsistency – they deny that this verse implies the Trinity, and yet they consider it a trinitarian insertion (which therefore would imply the Trinity). But this accusation won’t hold up. Rightly, unitarians deny that the verse (with the normal triple text) logically implies the Trinity or key component claims of it. They may be within their rights to think it sort of suggests it or fits best with some Trinity doctrine though. (This is far from obvious, in my view, despite what Price says above. In any case, this position is manifestly consistent.) I don’t this this is right, myself, as I explain below.

Typically, the older unitarians simply accepted the text, and found a way to read it which is consistent with unitarianism.

What about the passage might imply the equal divinity of the Three, and/or their in some sense composing or being “within” God or the divine nature? The context of baptism? No – see 1 Cor 1:15 and 10:2. Their being mentioned together? No, see 1 Tim 5:21. (Belsham, pp. 232-4). To his credit, Bowman realizes that his case can’t be this simple; there are just rival expositions are interpretations, and the question is, which is the best?

Here’s how he argues:

If Biblical Unitarianism is true, the Father is God himself, while the Holy Spirit is an aspect of God, specifically his power. Thus, two of the three names in Matthew 28:19 denote either God himself or an aspect of God, according to Biblical Unitarianism. The middle name, however, supposedly refers to a mere human being (though the greatest of them all) whom God exalted to a divine status. This would seem to be a problematic way of reading the text.

Sorry, I don’t see a difficulty. We frequently group things of different categories. I love my computer, my country, my mom, and Monty-Pythonesque humor. But Bowman continues,

If we simply paraphrase Matthew 28:19 to express explicitly how the Trinitarian and Biblical Unitarian theologies understand its meaning, the difficulty facing the Biblical Unitarian will become clear:

Trinitarian: “Baptize disciples in the name of God the Father, the name of God the Son, and the name of God the Holy Spirit.”
Biblical Unitarian: “Baptize disciples in the name of God, the name of the exalted virgin-born man Jesus, and the name of the power of God.”

Criticizing the Trinitarian interpretation based on arguments from silence ignores the fact that the Biblical Unitarian interpretation cannot simply repeat the words of the text without explanatory comment. Both views offer an interpretation of the text. The question is which of those interpretations best fits the text.

Indeed. I’m still not sure what the difficulty is, though.

Jesus says explicitly here to baptize disciples “into the name of…the Holy Spirit,” so that “Holy Spirit” is a name, like “Father” and “Son.” Anti-Trinitarians commonly assert that the Bible never gives the Holy Spirit a name and therefore he is not a person (at best another argument from silence), but Matthew 28:19 says explicitly that “Holy Spirit” is a “name.” This would seem to be very good evidence that the Holy Spirit is a person after all.

OK – Bowman thinks the words “in the name of” are important, and that they suggest(?) the personhood of the Spirit. Do they? Maybe. For example, if the idea is that one baptizes by the authority of each of the Three, that suggests that all three are selves. Suggests, but not implies – compare: “I arrest you in the name of the president, the governor, and the State of Texas.”

But I think it is a mistake to make too much of “in the name of” here. As a number of unitarians have pointed out, by considering parallel scriptures (I’m too lazy to list out the references or scriptures here – this post is too long), it is plausible to think that “being baptized in/into the name of X” means the same thing as “being baptized into X”. If this is right, the paraphrase for either trinitarian or unitarian would be: “baptize into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”.

But what does that mean? Those three aren’t liquids, so we can’t be dipped into any of them. The ceremony is an initiation into a community of disciples. I take it, to be baptized into X is to commit publicly to the teachings associated with X. So one can be baptized into Jesus, John, the death of Christ, etc. To wrap up my current take on this passage, there is only one set of doctrines in view here – that which has come from the Father, being delivered by the Son, and now confirmed and spread by the Spirit. It seems to me this thought is consistent with the Spirit being a self, but is also consistent with it being God’s power. One would refer to the same doctrines if one talks more simply, as in Acts, of being baptized into Christ, or in the name of Jesus, etc. This reading seems to sit well with v. 20, which brings up teaching. If I’m right, this passage can never be important positive evidence for either the trinitarian or unitarian (well, at least not this verse – as to the passage, arguably v. 18 is easier for the unitarian).

If this is right, then it doesn’t follow that the Spirit has a name. In any case, “The Spirit”, “The Holy Spirit”, “the Spirit of God” are at most titles applied to a self, but are not proper names like Rob, Dave, Jesus, or Yahweh. Nor is the passage, on my suggested reading, making any point about the words “Holy Spirit” – Bowman’s suggestions in that last paragraph, I suggest, and a dead end.

Finally, note that many commenters, and I possibly early interpreters as well, are distracted by the idea that this text is giving a baptismal formula; I think this is wrong-headed, and I believe that Bowman agrees. Assuming this is from the original text of the gospel, it is a general command to the Christian community – ceremonial correctness is just not in view.

As best I can tell, then, Bowman does not make the case that this verse “presents powerful evidence in support of the doctrine of the Trinity.”

But this is just one passage – perhaps a wider view is more helpful to his side?

By contrast, I argue that the Bible provides us with explicit doctrines about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which… I have shown to be firmly rooted in OT theology.

Burke has a point here, although it can be overstated. Burke’s theology allows him to stick more closely to the words of the NT and the message as preached, e.g. in Acts. Surely, considered by itself this is an advantage. Trinitarians will argue that it is outweighed by the fact that the unitarian message leaves out other essentials, if somewhat implicit ones. Burke complains that Bowman hasn’t defined “implicit“, but this is a general philosophical issue outside the realm of the debate. Burke emphasizes that his approach is “Hebraic” whereas Bowman’s is “Hellenic”. In some sense this may be true, but I don’t think it advances the debate. It is surely possible that God providentially used Greek philosophy to help uncover the true implications of the NT. Further, both debaters are to some extent using Greek-philosophy-originated concepts and logic. Another place in which they’re talking past one another is this issue of the importance of what is and is not explicit in the NT, and specifically in the preaching of the apostles. Bowman is surely right that, e.g. Peter need not assert every element of the apostolic teaching in one sermon, and that Luke’s summary of that sermon surely wouldn’t include all of it. But Burke is right that if it is an essential part of the faith, and necessary to believe for salvation, that e.g. the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person in God distinct from the Father and Son, then we would expect this to be explicitly taught by the apostles, up front, prior to baptism. And we do not find this. But I don’t believe that Bowman has said that one must believe this to be saved. But if he affirms it, and holds that the apostles teach it, then Burke has a strong argument against him. This is surely a pressing, practical question that should be raised.

It is striking that Acts 2 does not contain what are often nowadays held up as core, essential doctrines of the Good News. As Burke says,

In Acts 2 alone, thousands of people were baptised on the basis of the preaching they heard at Pentecost. That preaching is described in considerable detail, and the Holy Spirit is referred to prominently, but I find no reference to the Trinity or the deity of Christ, let alone the Holy Spirit as God. I have previously asked Rob to teach me the Trinity (or at least the deity of Jesus), in the way the apostles taught those they baptised.

This fact has impressed most unitarians, as well as trinitarians who believe that “the” doctrine truly developed later than the NT, and is not logically implied by it.

Concerning the Holy Spirit, Burke starts with the OT. Although it is arguably in a few places personified,

Throughout the OT, God’s Holy Spirit is described as something that belongs to Him, like a property or a power… This is amplified by the many passages in which the Holy Spirit is presented as something that can be bestowed upon others, for various purposes and with varying effects…

Burke concedes that in a few places this Spirit is spoken of in personal terms, i.e. as if it were a self. Might it not be a self? Burke makes an interesting move here, citing examples of “wisdom” being personified in passages in eight books of the Bible:

Judged purely on the basis of accumulated proof texts, it could be claimed that we have a stronger prima facie case for the literal personality and deity of wisdom than we do for the Holy Spirit. But is this a legitimate proposal?

Now the payoff:

Despite a number of theological developments between the OT and NT eras (including the expansion of wisdom language in apocryphal literature), Jewish pneumatology remained static. Those Jews who still retained a belief in the Holy Spirit, saw no reason to deviate from the original OT conception.

I have a concern here. Philo of Alexandria (rough contemporary of Jesus) the Hellenistic Jewish theologian / OT interpreter cannot be overlooked. Clearly, he was massively influential on 2nd century catholic biblical interpretation and theology, and he so enthusiastically personifies the Holy Spirit, inspired by the creation myth of Plato’s Timaeus, that it is unclear whether he only means to be personifying. We know that the Hellenizing of Jewish thought outside of Palestine goes back to the 200′s BCE; it is possible that some Jews, at least in Alexandria, had a view of the Holy Spirit as a being long ago derived from God, a helper in creation, so that God can as it were keep his hands clean of the material world. BUT, arguably there is little trace of deep Platonistic influence anywhere in the NT. So maybe the NT can be read whilst largely ignoring Greek philosophical theology.

Following a 1996 monograph by Max Turner, Burke neatly summarizes all the ways in which the Holy Spirit is spoken of in personal terms in Acts. But piling up a big list of these shows nothing; what matters is how the language is functioning. Is it mere personification or not? Burke points out that a number of these examples involve speaking; he then lists 10 references in which Scripture is said to speak.

How many Christians would claim that Scripture is a person? None that I know of; they would tell me that this is just a form of poetic license. Yet when faced with verses in which the Holy Spirit “speaks”, they insist that it must be a literal person. But why differentiate in this way? Which interpretation is more likely: that the same use of language implies a completely different conclusion in two identical cases, or that the same use of language implies the same conclusion for both? (emphasis added)

But is the language use here really “the same” in the two cases? Certainly, the Spirit is spoken of more often, and more pointedly, in personal terms. Again, as I mentioned last time, and as is argued in a Biblical Unitarian article which Burke links, many unitarians urge that there is a dual usage of “the Holy Spirit” in the NT – it can be a title or name referring to God (in which case what it refers to is literally a self) or it can be used to refer to an impersonal thing, God’s power. In the first usage, to say that “The Holy Spirit told us to go to Macedonia” would mean that God told them to do that, it being understood that this was through some “gift of the Holy Spirit” – impression, prophecy, dream, etc. If this is right, then it won’t do to accuse trinitarians of failing to treat like cases alike, for they are not (enough) alike.

This may also explain why Bowman thinks unitarians are weaselly about this topic – they have a thesis about two uses of the phrase “the Holy Spirit” (etc.), and he conflates this with their making two incompatible claims about one thing. Burke is clear about that one thing – he holds God to be a self, and not in any sense a complex of three selves. But he’s needlessly inflexible about NT language. He wants to hold the like that all Spirit-talk is personification. But this is a needless over-reaction to the trinitarian tradition.

And the end of his case, Burke concludes with a few comment on Revelation 4-5. There, the Father is presented as God, and as creator, and Jesus is represented as a Lamb – a separate being from God. And the Holy Spirit is arguably not portrayed there at all, at least not as any sort of self or agent. People may be tempted to deride this is an “argument from silence”. But it is no fallacy, for it is plausible that if the Holy Spirit was “together with the Father and the Son [to be] adored and glorified”, then he’d make an appearance here, as an object of worship. It doesn’t follow that the Holy Spirit isn’t a divine person (that’d be a fallacy); rather, this passage is evidence against the view that the Holy Spirit is a divine person – fallible, overridable evidence, but significant evidence nonetheless. Other such negative evidence is there too – see the article Burke links for some examples.

This raises the issue: isn’t Jesus worshiped here, with “religious worship” no less? And can’t only God himself be worshiped? (Or does Rev 4-5 refute that claim?) But more on this later; Burke says some things about this in a long comment on a previous round.

Though there may be important rebuttals and back and forth coming, for now I have to award this round to Burke. He shows that given the OT background of the NT, the burden is on someone who thinks that Jewish thinking about the Spirit of God radically changed during the ministry of Jesus. Bowman essentially bets it all on John 14-6 plus Acts, arguing, not too convincingly, that he can deduce the true personhood of the Spirit from these. But he does very little to show this is a person other than the Father, alongside and equal to the Father, which is what he needs to show. Although Burke’s case is needlessly over strong (about the usage of “the Holy Spirit”) and marred by some ineffective charges (“Hellenism”), he builds on a solid OT foundation, and makes a plausible case that this pattern of thinking continues in the NT, e.g. in Luke 1:35. He focuses on (what he takes to be) personifications of the Spirit in the NT. He might have said more about NT spirit-talk which doesn’t involve that – are there other usages which sort of balance out the personifying?

Score:
Bowman: 0
Burke: 2
draw: 2

In the end of his pre-emptive rebuttal, Bowman attributes this argument to unitarians:

1. The Bible contains no progressive revelation concerning God.
2. The OT does not reveal the Holy Spirit as a distinct divine person.
3. Therefore, the NT does not reveal the Holy Spirit as a distinct divine person.

I suspect that some current day unitarians do endorse this argument. (Does Burke?) Christians of any stripe who believe in any sort of Hell, in souls, or that the NT more clearly reveals the character of the Father, would probably reject 1. For these sorts of reasons, I reject it myself. In my view progressive revelation is different from the Islamic idea of “abrogation” (later Quranic verses contradicting and cancelling out or over-ruling earlier ones). Progressive revelation doesn’t involve contradiction of something earlier asserted, but rather clarifying something previously unclear, and contradicting things one might have inferred from what was formerly asserted. But back to Bowman.

Bowman opines that the OT unclearly hints at the Spirit being a distinct divine person, but he wants to say that this truth is only first clearly revealed in John 14-16. I think this puts him far off of patristic exegesis, btw – but maybe that’s a good thing.

The real meat of Bowman’s case is his exegesis of the books of John and Acts. His first positive argument is essentially this. Jesus promised that after leaving, he’d send “another Paraclete” – another helper, comforter. This implies that Jesus was the church’s first Paraclete. If Jesus was the first Paraclete, then doing that job requires being a self. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is a self. Moreover (and I’m not sure what this adds to the case) “The descriptions of the Paraclete in John pervasively describe the Holy Spirit in terms that echo what the Johannine writings say about the Son…” (original emphasis)  I guess in Bowman’s view God adds a bunch of hints in – that this “holy spirit” is really, really like Jesus.

Bowman admits that just because something is truly described in personal terms, it doesn’t follow that it is a self. His examples: the Bible “speaks” to us, and Jesus’ miracles “testified” to him. He concedes that this weakens the trinitarians’ case for the personhood of God’s Spirit.

However, take these and the other elements of what John 14-16 says about the Holy Spirit cumulatively in the context of the narrative in which one person, the Son, is leaving and before he goes promises to send someone like him, the Holy Spirit, in his stead, and the argument really becomes irrefutable.

Irrefutable? I don’t get it. Story time.

The day had come. Pa had to leave on the cattle drive. Ma, junior, and Sally stood outside the ramshakle cabin, looking at the ground, unsure of what to say, and weighed down with the prospect of the lonely months ahead. Pa’s horse was already saddled, and it stood calmly facing the rising sun. Pa spoke.

“I’m goin’, but you know I’ll really be with ya. I’ve left a friend with you. He’ll remind you of me. He’ll make you feel safe at night. If you want, he’ll even sleep in your bed. And if any rough types or Injuns come around, he’ll yell at them till they high tail it away. He’ll make you strong, and he won’t leave you night or day till I come back. If you go on a trip, he’ll ride shotgun with you.”

With a kiss for Ma, and a hair tussles for Junior and Sally, Pa mounted and rode slowly away. Returning to the warmth of the cabin, Ma found a pistol on the table.

Ma was not compelled by Pa’s plethora of personalizations to consider the Colt single action revolver to be alive.

In another argument, Bowman says that starting in Acts, we see the Holy Spirit “appear as a named actor or participant in the biblical narrative”, just as we’d expect if He really was a self, newly revealed as such by Jesus towards the end of his ministry. The Spirit says things, gives directions. It/he is “poured out”, but in the Bible people can be said to be “poured out”, and it/he “fills” people, but Satan is said to “fill” people’s hearts as well (5:3).

Bowman sums up:

We have, then, compelling evidence in the NT, especially in John and Acts, that the Holy Spirit is a divine person, distinct from the Father and the Son. This means that Unitarianism is incompatible with the NT. Given that the Holy Spirit is either God himself or an aspect of God’s being, the evidence that he is a person distinct from the Father shows that the Trinitarian understanding of the Holy Spirit best accounts for the NT teaching.

This last part is typical Bowman – arguing that the NT straight up logically implies his view, but also urging, as if he’s aware that the first part isn’t too clear, that his view is the best explanation of what is in the NT (explicitly and implicitly). If the first works, the second is unnecessary, and if the second works, the first is misguided. In any case, what to make of his case?

It is not clear to me that a unitarian must take the flat-footed approach Bowman is attacking – they needn’t read all holy-spirit-talk in the NT as referring to a power or expression of power. Thus, John Wilson:

For if the holy spirit is not, in every instance in which the term is used, merely the power or agency of God, or his influence on the human mind, or his miraculous gifts, but frequently the Almighty being himself – surely this being can be no other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, unless clearly mentioned in the Bible as a a person distinct from AND EQUAL to the Father, – a point which is readily assumed by Trinitarians, but has never yet been proved. (p. 326 original emphases)

Wilson here puts his finger on the weakest part of Bowman’s case – sure, if sometimes “the Holy Spirit” refers to a person, why think it is a person other than God, that is, the Father? After all, it is never portrayed as enjoying a personal relationship with God, or as being a servant of God, like Jesus. It doesn’t really have a proper name. And whose spirit is it? God’s. (Acts 2) Conceptually, persons have or are spirits, but selves or persons are not the spirits of other selves. And in the Bible, God is a self.

What evidence does Bowman present that the Spirit is a self distinct from the Father/God? So far as I can see, only this: the parallelism between Jesus and the Spirit in John 14-16 – both Jesus and the Spirit are “from the Father”, and given by him. The unitarian will simply read this as God sending his power, as a number of passages say.

Is this not the sort of flexible spirit-talk we see in the OT? Did this not guide the NT writer’s usage of it? It is a little suspicious how Bowman rushes past the whole issue of OT lingo, seeing as it would have largely provided the tradition in which the NT writers were working.

Again, if Bowman is right, that at the end of Jesus’ ministry, God introduced a third divine agent, the lack of interest in this agent is striking, and cries out for explanation. As countless unitarians have pointed out, the Holy Spirit is never an object of worship in the NT (not what we’d expect, if he’s just been revealed as a divine person, co-equal with the other two), and as historians point out, there was relatively little speculation about the metaphysical nature of the Holy Spirit in early church history. Again, specialists have pointed out a “binitarian” structure to early Christian worship. Not what we’d expect, if Bowman is right.

This last is another case where Catholics have an answer, but Bowman doesn’t. Viewing the early catholic movement as holding the apostolic mantle and anointing, they think that the co-equal divinity of the Spirit was only revealed some time around the run up to the council of Constantinople in 381. Of course, the unitarians can explain these things too.

Bowman seems to think that the sheer prominence of the Spirit throughout Acts somehow confirms his views about the doctrine of John. But unitarians have an explanation as well – that when Jesus ascended, the disciples were given a qualitatively now sort of access to God, resulting in their being filled with his spirit, able to hear God’s voice (and Jesus’ voice as well), and to work miracles by this power active in them.

Finally, there is a striking fact about Christians’ personal experiences down through the ages. If you read around, you’ll find a number of instances, going back to Paul, in which Christians have experienced the risen Jesus. This is fairly rare, though. Much more common than this, is Christian experience of the presence, power, and filling of the Holy Spirit. But they take the presence of the Holy Spirit to just be the presence of God – not of someone else, as in the case of Jesus. It is a distinct sort of presence – not at all like the presence of God one reads about it Isaiah or Revelation, e.g. of God’s throne room. But it is of him, and not of one of his two associates or subordinates. That is how the recipients of these experiences describe them. Are these reports not a better fit with the unitarian view?

In sum, I think Bowman shows that sometimes the NT authors are thinking of “the Holy Spirit” as a self, and he gives a very careful and detailed case, properly conceding some points that unitarians have long insisted on, but which other catholic theologians have been loathe to admit.  But he doesn’t show that the NT writers think Spirit is a self in addition to God, or that it is one which is co-equal to the Father. A position not on the table, but of interest, is one like that of early modern unitarian John Biddle, who held the Holy Spirit to be an agent subordinate to the Father. This too is an explanation that must be weighed along with the trinitarian and humanitarian unitarian ones. Before it is weighed, it isn’t clear which is the best explanation.

In a way, Bowman has put all his eggs into two baskets here – John and Acts. But as my comments above bring out, there are a number of wider issues – conceptual, historical, experiential – that seem relevant and important.

Still unresolved is the problem dogging Bowman’s whole performance in this debate – isn’t his position self- inconsistent? He seems to hold that Jesus just is God – and also, some things are true of one which are not true of the other. These can’t both be true. And also, the Holy Spirit is God – and again, some things are  true of one which are not true of the other. And this third person differs from Christ as well – even though both just are God.  Are we heaping up inconsistencies here?

They call me "The More Than Subtle Doctor." You can call me Johnnie Boy.

A postscript to our Richard series: I was reading the interesting and dense The Mysteries of Christianity, by 19th c. German Catholic theologian Joseph Scheeben, on Richard of St. Victor, and he says the following in a footnote:

Scotus states decisively that Richard of St. Victor adduces rationes necessariae for the Trinity, but not evidenter necessariae, because the principles from which he argues are not evident. Cf. III Sent., d.24, q.un., no.20; I Sent., d.42, q.un., no. 4; Reportata, prol., no. 18. (p. 29, fn. 11)

I assume that Scotus’s point is the Richard’s arguments are valid, but that each has at least one unknown premise (making them not real “proofs” or demonstrations). But I lack the time and Latin ability to chase down these quotes and translate them.

Anyone else care enough about this to do it?

If you’re not a trinities contributor, this could be a guest post opportunity. The task: read the above passages, translate the relevant bits, share the translated bits and the point of them with us here.

Is Scheeben correct in saying that these objections are decisive? If you’re interested, email me.

Richard starts off with the point that for the Persons of the Trinity, unlike the case of any other persons, there is “individuality without plurality” – each is what it is without any plurality of any kind – and “unity without inequality” – I’m not sure what he means by this second phrase. (p. 396)

In contrast, any other person, such as you or me, can be “unequal to himself”, in that we can become greater or lesser over time. (e.g. I’m smarter and morally better now than when I was 14.) And persons like us have multiple properties (we’re not simple). (p. 396) And of a human person, say Barak Obama, we can say that “his power alone is dissimilar to itself… [since] one thing is easy for him, another is difficult and a third is impossible.” (p. 397)

Then he says, “one and the same nature… in one respect is less, in another it is greater, and [so is]… dissimilar and unequal to itself.” (p. 397) So, the same point he made about persons, can also be made about natures. Thus,

…where there is no true simplicity, true equality cannot exist. However in that Trinity, nowhere is anything dissimilar to itself nor is it unequal to any other in anything. (p. 397)

I assume that by “true equality” he means qualitative sameness/equality in the highest degree. Normally, when we call some X and some Y “qualitatively the same” we allow that they differ somewhat (e.g. two golf balls from the same package). But not here – the Father and Son don’t differ in their intrinsic properties, and so are as qualitatively the same as two things could possibly be. (This is just begging to be objected to, but I’ll pass it by.)

After this, he quotes the “Athanasian” creed on the equality of the Persons, and triumphantly ends with one more quote from that creed:

Behold now we have proved by open and manifold reasoning how true that is which we are commanded to believe, namely, that we venerate “one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity.” (p. 397, emphasis added)

I’ll end with just a few observations about our whole Richard series:

• Richard has not persuaded me, by any of his arguments, that a perfect being must be tri-personal, or even that a perfect being must enjoy reciprocated love of an equal. It seems to me possible that perfect being lacks that good, and is nonetheless happy, and perfectly benevolent.
• It’s also clear  that Richard has no way to get his arguments (supposing they worked) to stop at three. Unlike Swinburne, he doesn’t even seem aware that he needs to show only three in addition to at least three. He leaves things at the latter.
• If your view of the Trinity is incompatible with the classical doctrine of divine simplicity – and if you call yourself a “social” trinitarian, it probably is, then Richard is not your ally, as he assumes the truth of the doctrine.
• As I explained last time, I don’t think his views on the Trinity are self-consistent. He needs the Persons to intrinsically differ from each other, and yet he insists, so as to remain orthodox, and to avoid tritheism, that they do not. Thus, he  needs to appeal to mystery – this self-inconsistency must just be due to the greatness of the subject-matter. It isn’t that he’s trying to have it both ways… He repeatedly sounds (e.g. in ch. 9, 10, 24) what I call negative mysterian notes, but rather half-heartedly – his Anselmian zeal is little cooled by such points.
• Another apparent inconsistency: he crucially appeals to the notion of cooperation. But if X and Y cooperate in a work, they do it together, and each makes his own contribution. Each, that is, exercises his own power. Cooperation involves two exercises of power, to bring about one effect (or various parts of one effect). And yet, given Richard’s views on simplicity, there is between the Persons of the Trinity one power, and so one exercise of power in any alleged case of “cooperation”. Which is to say, it isn’t really cooperation. It’ll just be the action of one god.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but not God himself

and

The Holy Spirit is the power of God, but not God himself.

Further,

The Bible is the inspired Word of God and the sole authoritative source of Christian doctrine and practice.

He neither affirms or denies inerrancy, though I doubt that will matter to this debate. That he really holds the Bible to be the sole source of Christian doctrine is doubtful, even though he reiterates this old Protestant slogan. I predict we’ll see him using principles justifiable only by reason, for example in interpreting the Bible. But he is asserting that councils, bishops, etc. have no underived authority, no authority that is independent of the Bible.

I will be using the words “God” and “Father” interchangeably.

This is familiar from John, Paul, and Peter. And Jesus in all the Gospels. (Yes – there are a very few passages where arguably Jesus is addressed as or called “God” – these are infrequent exceptions, but any theory will have to account for them as well.)

Here’s my first flag:

Arguments from silence are inadmissible
An argument from silence (“argumentum ex silentio”) is a logical fallacy defined as a conclusion based upon a lack of evidence. For example:

The apostle Paul does not refer to the virgin birth in his epistles
Therefore, Paul was ignorant of the teaching that Jesus’ mother was a virgin when she conceived him
This argument is flawed because the conclusion does not follow from the premise.

Arguments from silence can be good arguments. Argument from silence is an informal fallacy, and for any informal fallacy, there can be circumstances where the inference in question is reasonable. If someone doesn’t say P, we oftentimes can’t conclude with any probability that not-P – it depends, though.

• But when I got home tonight, my wife didn’t mention anything about being mugged today. I conclude that she was not mugged today. This is a perfectly fine argument, although the premises don’t entail the conclusion. (The missing premise: Probably, if my wife had been mugged today, she would have told me that she had been some time between my arriving home and now.)
• Again, I don’t see a pink elephant in here, so there is no pink elephant it here. No problem with that argument at all.
• Still, Burke is right that the example argument he gives is a weak one, or at least not obviously very strong.

Flag 2:

Any proposed definitions of a word must be supported from several examples of identical usage
This principle is self explanatory.

No, there are cases where you can reason to the meaning of a word when there are no parallels. I’m going to itch my frack right now; it is itchy, because I used Crusty Brand Shampoo too many days in a row. I’ll itch my frack right after I push my hair out of the way, and remove my hat. Probably, some loose dandruff will be released.

Now, I’ll bet you’re pretty sure what I meant by “frack”. I take it Dave’s point, though, is that he doesn’t want to allow arbitrary, special-pleading, theory-saving definitions for words. Fair enough.

Flag 3:

the Christian God is the Jewish God and everything that we know about Him through the Christian message was already known to the Jews through Judaism.

I don’t think he really wants to say this. But it can be argued that the NT concept of God pretty much is the same as the OT one, though the NT writers may have presented a better or more complete representation of his character. I mean, where does any NT author assert some essential attribute of God that that can’t be found somewhere in the OT?

Flag 4:

Since it is now widely accepted that the first-century church was not Trinitarian, it has become necessary for Trinitarians to explain (a) why this was and (b) how Trinitarianism successfully emerged from an ideological climate which was wholly unfavourable to it.

This is, in my view, true and important. Further, there’s a unsettling disconnect here between biblical specialists and theologians on this score. But I throw a minor flag, because the point does need arguing in this context. Bowman appears to hold that the NT writers implicitly held trinitarian views. If this is so, then in a sense some early Christians were trinitarian. This is probably out of bounds for this debate, but if anyone is curious, read what we have from Justin Martyr, and ask yourself whether or not he’s a trinitarian in anything like the sense on which Bowman would insist.

Burke points out that on the face of it, the God of the Bible is a self. There are the personal pronouns. And there is the way he’s clearly assumed to be someone other than, and hence some other being than (any person / self just is a certain being) Jesus – someone Jesus obeys, prays to, loves.

• I think Dave goes too far when he asserts that Deut 6:4 features “explicit Unitarian language”, but I’ve posted on that passage before. (Again, here.)
• He doesn’t need to say that, though. Yahweh is supposed to be what? A god. What is a god? A certain sort of self. That puts the burden on one who accepts the accuracy of the Bible, but denies that he’s a person / self. We’ll look next time at how Bowman responds.

He anticipates that Bowman won’t be impressed, so he asks:

(a) What would you consider valid evidence of a Unitarian God?
(b) If God is one person how would you expect Scripture to say so?

Good questions.

Finally, Burke points out, like Samuel Clarke, that only the Father / God is called pantokrator (all – powerful), and according to two gospels, only he is all-knowing, and Jesus is not all-knowing. (Mt 24:36) God is omnipresent, self-existent, essentially immortal, morally perfect, invisible, and incorporeal. Jesus doesn’t share these last two attributes.

But according to Burke, Jesus is morally perfect, and this entails that he can neither sin nor be tempted. But was he not tempted, according to Burke?

Next up: Bowman’s opening salvo.

Certainly one and the same substance is not something greater or lesser, better or worse than itself. Therefore, [there are no inequalities among members of the Trinity] since one and the same substance is certainly in each. …for this reason any two persons [in the Trinity] will not be something greater or better than any one person alone; nor will all three taken together be more [great?] than any two or any one alone by himself… (p. 396)

I take it that in the first sentence here that by “substance” he’s referring to the divine nature, saying that it can’t be greater than itself. That’s hard to argue with. He then argues that no person can be greater than any other. There’s an assumption here that greatness is solely a function of a thing’s nature. I’m not sure why we should accept that. Why not other intrinsic properties as well? One might think, e.g. it is greater to be the Father than it is to be the Son, hence even though they share the divine nature, one might think that the Father is greater than the Son. The inference from X and Y have the same substance to X and Y are the same in greatness, seems invalid. But if we make a valid argument, by adding the premise that greatness is a function solely of essence, we have valid argument, but then, why accept the premise? Why think the argument to be sound?

Maybe he doesn’t need the premise though. Working as he is in an Augustinian tradition of Trinity theories, he may be assuming that each Person has no intrinsic properties other than the divine nature – not only is the divine nature simple, but it is the only component of each Person, so that each person is simple as well. If this is what he’s assuming, we’d get a valid argument, like this:

1. Greatness is a function of a thing’s intrinsic properties.
2. The Persons have no intrinsic properties beyond the divine nature.
3. The Persons share one and the same divine nature.
4. Therefore, the Persons do not differ in greatness.

The idea here is that the Persons are three because of extrinsic relations – e.g. Fatherhood is not some extra ingredient or component in the Father. Instead, it’s just a way that… the divine nature relates to itself? This in my view is highly problematic, but that’s matter for a different post.

I assume he’s not arguing that Father and Son can’t differ in greatness because they are numerically identical. That would make the argument valid – as nothing can’t be greater than itself, and Father and Son are one thing, therefore, neither is greater than the other. But if they are numerically one, then they can’t differ in any way, as nothing can differ from itself. And Richard assumes that Father and Son differ. So, this must not be how he’s arguing.

Finally, he ends with a blow on the mysterian trumpet:

Now observe how incomprehensible is that coequality of greatness from every viewpoint and in every respect in that Trinity where unity does not lack plurality and plurality does not go beyond unity! (p. 396)

I’m not sure what to make of all of this. One could read into it relative identity theories, or the Rea-Brower constitution theory, which invokes the dubious concept of “numerical sameness without identity”. On the other hand, there is the appeal to “incomprehensibility”. Is this a nod towards the apparent inconsistency of his views?

It seems to me that Richard doesn’t think the Persons of the Trinity to be identical (numerically the same), even though he thinks them to not differ in any component (in all one of them – as the only component in each is one and the same divine nature). They are three agents/persons/selves, and they must be three, for his arguments about love to even get one inch off the launchpad. Now add in his point that the three of them share a nature. It doesn’t obviously follow that they are one because of this share component – why can’t three things share a nature? It may, per the above argument, suffice to make them equal.

But how can they then be in personal relationships with one another?

• If X and Y “share perfect love”, then X has the property of loving Y, and of being loved by Y.
• And Y has the property of loving X, and of being loved by X.
• But solely because of their sharing perfect love, unlike Y, X doesn’t have this property – being loved by X. Thus, X and Y differ, both intrinsically (in the acts of loving) and relationally (their receiving the other’s love).
• Thus, there must be more to both than just the divine nature – there must be some extra component. So, the person must each be simple, and yet none of them can be.

Is that the mystery (apparent inconsistency)? Or in the quote above just a habitual flourish? Or is there another way to read all of this?

In chapter 23, Richard says that between the members of the Trinity “there seems to be more identity [sameness] than equality.” (p. 395) He then cites as an example three indistinguishable golden statues. Because they’re indistinguishable, we say they are “equal”. But there are three masses of gold involved, and so there are really three things here, three statues. But the case of the Trinity is different, he urges. How? Because “whatever is in any one person of the Trinity, the smae is also completely in any other person.” Here, he implies, we do have a deeper kind of “identity” or “sameness”.

I take it that Richard’s point is that the three Persons of the Trinity don’t differ as far as their composition, because each contains one and the same divine nature, here thought of as a particular.

He then brings up a case of “three rational spirits”, three souls. Though they may be equal, in that each is powerful and wise in the same way and to the same degree, they are in the end both three persons and “three substances”. His implied point, I assume, is that each has his own nature as a component – such as humanity, or maybe rational soulhood . Three natures, ergo three “substances” – I take it, there things, three concrete individuals.

Continuing to read into him, he means to contrast both of the cases with the Trinity in this way. Because the Three share one divinity, one divine nature as a component (share one “substance” in the sense of essence or nature), they are therefore, even though three persons, one substance, that is, one concrete individual, specifically one god.

Of course, the Persons will also be “equal”, for the same reason (sharing one token divine nature) – he makes this point at the very end of chapter 23.

I'm a hybrid. I'm made of lines, but I also shine (as indicated by more lines).

In the last post, I explained that Nestorians believe that a complete individual human nature is indiscernible from an individual human person.

Monophysites also take this idea very seriously. In fact, the Monophysite takes very seriously the more general claim that a complete individual nature of any kind is indiscernible from the corresponding individual that belongs to that kind (for instance, a complete individual cow-nature just is the individual cow in question). So if there are two natures in Christ, then there will be two individuals that correspond to each of those natures.

But the Monophysite does not want to say that there are two persons in Christ, so he will insist that there is just one nature in Christ. That way, there will just be one person. But since Christ is both human and divine, this one nature must be a special hybrid of divinity and humanity.

The strongest form of Monophysitism would claim that this hybrid Christness-nature has all divine properties, and all human properties. This, however, is incoherent, for it would amount to two persons as well. After all, having all the divine properties is sufficient for membership in God’s-kind, and having all human properties is sufficient for membership in human-kind. There would, then, still be two natures, which contradicts the initial claim that there is just one (allegedly) hybrid nature.

So the more careful Monophysite will want to say that Christ lacks at least some of the properties required for either or both of God’s-kind or human-kind. That way, there will not be two natures (and hence, not two persons).

This allows us to distinguish between various forms of ‘weak’ monophysitism. For example:

(a) One could say that Christ only lacks a human feature (e.g., rationality). That’s Apollinarianism (a weak form of Monophysitism).

(b) One could say that Christ lacks certain divine features (e.g., omnipotence). That’s kenoticism (a weak form of Monophysitism as well).

(c) One could say that Christ lacks certain divine features and certain human features (e.g., an Apollinarian-Kenoticist?), and that would be the weakest form of Monophysitism.

Don't let my flowing white locks fool you. I have sound ideas.

In the last post, I explained that an individual human nature is indiscernible from an individual human person.

The Nestorianism takes this point very seriously. As she sees it, if the Word (= the second person of the Trinity) assumes a complete individual human nature, then the Word assumes a discrete human person too, for a complete individual human nature is completely indiscernible from a discrete human person. But the Word is already a discrete person, namely a divine person, so the question is this: is the divine person identical to the assumed human person?

It would seem that the answer is no. For instance, one could point out that if x and y are the very same thing, then they must share all the same properties. But the divine person and the human person in Christ do not share all the same properties. For example, the divine person does not grow or take in nutrients, while the human person does. So the divine person must not be the same as the human person.

But that means there are two distinct persons in Christ: a divine person and a human person. And that is precisely what Nestorianism claims: there are two natures, and two persons in Christ.

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In the last post, I classified Monophysitism, Chalcedonianism, and Nestorianism. All three of these must grapple with a basic philosophical issue, namely this: a complete indvidual human nature brings along with it everything required for being a discrete human person.

Note that ‘individual human nature’ does not mean the humanity in the human in question (readers of scholastic philosophy are often tempted to think that). Rather, it means the humanity plus any individuating features, whatever they might be (a haecceity, a unique collection of accidents, or whatever). That is, an individual human nature is whatever it is that makes an individual human the particular human that it is.

For instance, if some x has a complete individual human nature, then one might say that x has the relevant kind of organic body, the ability to take in and process nutrients, grow, be sentient, think and love, and so on, and all of these things are what being a particular human consists in.

However, these also seem to be the very things that being a particular human person consists in too. After all, it is hard to imagine a human person without the relevant kind of organic body, the ability to process nutrients, be sentient, think and love, and so forth. To be all these things is just what it means to be a particular human person.

So on the face of it, it looks as if being an individual human is the very same as being an individual human person. That is, if one has a complete individual human nature, then they have everything needed to be a discrete human person too. Or, to put it another way, an individual human is completely indiscernible from the corresponding individual human person.

We're here to defend the faith against heresy!

The Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) condemned Monophysitism and Nestorianism. The following table helps to classify Monophysitism, Nestorianism, and Chalcedonianism.

Nestorianism: 2 natures, 2 persons
Chalcedonianism: 2 natures, 1 person
Monophysitism: 1 nature, 1 person

So Nestorians hold that in Christ, there are two natures (discrete divine and human natures), and two persons (discrete divine and human persons).

Chalcedonians hold that there are two natures (discrete divine and human natures) but one person (Jesus Christ).

Monophysites hold that there is one nature (a special divine-human hybrid nature) and one person (Jesus Christ).

In the next post, I will discuss the basic philosophical issue that these various positions grapple with.