On such theories, it turns out that the one “God” is a group – a group of equally divine selves (aka gods – though they don’t like that term in the plural). This is surprising to be sure - is not the God of the Bible a super-duper self? One who is all-knowing, who loves and hates, carries out plans of action, smites and heals? Moreover, theism is usually explained as belief in one perfect, non-physical self, creator off all else.

Social trinitarians have of late been pushing back. “God isn’t one person, he’s three! We Christians have never said – or at least, never should have said – that God is a person. He’s not a person, though he’s personal. And that makes our view monotheistic.”

(A similar dialectic occurs with “social” theorists who don’t say that Father, Son, and Spirit are a mere group. Instead, they constitute or are within some one thing – but this thing is not a self.)

Now I think this response is wrongheaded in several ways, and am working on at least one paper responding to it.

But for now I note that a number of these “social” theorists are evangelicals, and thus many of them tend to take positions in other areas which push in the opposite direction.

• Christology. Who is Christ? God. And Christ is a self – one with two natures. Thus, God is a self as well – the same one as Christ.
• Theistic piety or spirituality. God is a he, not an it. He’s someone you can talk to, someone who loves you, someone who sympathizes with the downtrodden. He’s far from being an it – a force, “being itself”, or the other high-falutin’, abstract things people have imagined. Which brings us to:
• “Worldview” apologetics. Eastern (Buddhist, Hindu) views of ultimate reality are often criticized for their “impersonal” take on the ultimate. Theism – seemingly belief in a perfect, provident self – is argued to be more reasonable, and perhaps more practical as well.

In this series, we’re going to have fun with video – with interviews with some philosophical theologians, Christian and otherwise. Each time I’ll like an interview clip, and comment on the guy’s answers.

These are from the TV series Closer to the Truth, which I believe airs on some American PBS stations. The interviewer has a pretty impressive resume. He asks each interviewee: “Is God a person?”

The question, I take it, is not whether or not God is a human being – but rather, is God a self – a subject of consciousness, what Descartes calls a thinking thing, something with will and intellect.

Next time: Jewish philosopher-theologian Neil Gillman.

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…?

First, he reiterates that the Bible doesn’t explicitly talk of any triple-personed god, but instead calls the God of the Jews the Father. His Son is Jesus, and they stand in a hierarchy as two persons – the Son “under” the Father – over the realm of angels. He says that “Scripture never includes the Holy Spirit in this hierarchy”, but this begs the question – Bowman’s fifth round focused on passages which he thinks puts the Spirit at the top of the hierarchy alongside Father and Son. Again, I complain about the format of the debate, which forces the debaters to talk past one another.

Second, he cites numerous passages to show that his unitarian take on the Trinity is consonant with apostolic teaching – with their language but also with their concepts, to throw the burden on the trinitarian. About the triadic passages Bowman focuses on, he says only this: “all three were recognised as sources of apostolic authority… It is therefore natural that they appear together in ways which reflect this relationship…” Sources? Like, authorities (selves possessing authority)? I think this needs more spelling out, to make it clearly consistent with Burke’s other views, and to show that it is well-motivated. I read something interesting on this recently.

Can of worms #1: early catholic theology. The most famous of 2nd c. catholic theologians were subordinationists – they held that Jesus was “generated” by the Father through a mysterious act of will prior to the creation of the cosmos. Although they thought of this as the expression of God’s internal and eternal “word” or thought, this is incompatible with later orthodoxy, because the Son isn’t eternal, and is arguably not “fully divine” – as he exists because of something else – God. At times, they even call the Son “a second god”. Burke observes:

None of these early church fathers were Biblical Unitarians – but they weren’t Trinitarians either… even as late as the 4th c…. Christians were hopelessly confused… [even then] the Trinity was still not a fully established doctrine. …Rob is vague about the point at which he believes the church embraced true Trinitarianism, but I receive a general sense that he perceives an implicit Trinitarian Christology within the NT which quickly gave rise to fully-fledged Trinitarianism. …But the history of Trinitarianism… reveals an excruciating mess of debate, controversy, and confusion… How can Trinitarianism be the doctrine once preached by the apostles…? …It is contrary to reason, antagonistic to Scripture, and undermined by the record of history.

So Burke’s point is that trinitarianism can’t have been part of the apostolic message. How does Bowman respond to this blast? Tune in next time, in which I discuss his long response in a comment, and bring up some other relevant historical information.

Can of worms #2: Could a fully divine Jesus have been tempted? A fully divine being can’t sin. Bowman holds that Jesus is and has always been fully divine. So, there can never have been any possibility of Jesus sinning. But, counters Burke, the Bible says outright that he was tempted. And a being which can’t sin, can’t really be tempted. Saith Burke: “the statement ‘Jesus could be tempted but was not capable of sin’ is both self-refuting and utterly meaningless.” (BTW – he should stick with the first – that statement is not meaningless - apparently contradictory statements have meaning, which is how we can tell they are contradictory.) Moreover, the NT says that he could be tempted and could have sinned.

Bowman fires back in a lengthy comment, #18. He says some interesting things regarding this issue, but the gist is that Burke “confuses capability with moral capacity”. Jesus was capable or sinning, but never had any moral capacity to sin. Bowman here makes a move here akin to what compatibilists about human freedom say – that a choice being free doesn’t require ever having had an unconditional ability to choose otherwise, but only conditional abilities – one would have chosen otherwise had various other factors been otherwise. (Factors over which one never had any control!) This is worrisome – in my view compatibilism (about determinism and human freedom) has been refuted by van Inwagen’s famous “consequence argument”. Many philosophers would agree with me, although philosophers are heavily divided on this.

Suppose that tomorrow, a voice boomed from the heavens, “No more dynamite explosions!” And lo and behold, all dynamite in the world was, by the hand of God, rendered inert – incapable of exploding. Either God has changed the laws of nature, or he’s just determined to constantly intervene. For the time being, your dynamite collection is ruined. No more redneck fishing for you and your buddies.

But on a street corner, you’re seduced by the promise of a black market explosives dealer – “I promise, son, that I’ve got some explodable dynamite here.” You examine it – it really is dynamite, and purchase some. You find that it won’t explode. But the salesman says “I meant it had the capability of exploding – not the actual capacity of exploding. It has what it takes to explode were God to rescind his decision to disallow dynamite explosions.” You feel that you’ve been deceived, and you and your redneck buddies proceed to kick the salesman’s derrière - but the fact is, what he said was consistent. By “explodable” he meant only that in some possible, non-actual situations, this stuff gets set off – never mind that those situations are ones inaccessible to us (unless we change God’s mind).

Contrast this, though, with what Bowman is saying. Jesus is God. Are there any possible situations in which God sins? No. So, Jesus sinning is no more possible than it being true that 2 + 2 = 5 – Jesus exists no matter what, and is essentially perfect in every way. Bowman says

Jesus had the capability, physically speaking, of committing sins (e.g., he had a mouth and knew enough to lie; he had hands and was physically capable of stealing)…

But none of those, or even all put together are sufficient to make Jesus able to sin. That he has capacities which other beings might be able to sin with is irrelevant. God has these, but we (most of us) say that God can’t sin. (e.g. smiting power, which God shares with murderers) To say that a person can do X only if some contradiction is true (or if some absolutely impossible situation is actual) is just a way of saying that it is absolutely impossible for that person to do X. Bowman holds that Jesus can sin. But supposing Jesus to sin is, in his view, to suppose that a being which is essentially impeccable sins – which is a contradiction. Could, say, a ping-pong ball sin? By this sort of reasoning, sure! I has no actual capacity of sinning, but if it were a self with moral knowledge (which I take it is not possible for this little plastic globe) then it could. Could a potato perform a waltz? Sure – if it here a living human being. (But wait – that’s not possible…)

In short, Bowman is urging that we believe in abilities or powers or capacities which in principle can’t be exercised or realized – in philosophical lingo, such that in no possible world does the being in question actualize it. This, however, is absurd – the notion of an absolutely (or in principle) unrealizable potentiality. Such a thing isn’t a potentiality at all – we’re being urged to believe in a sort of property or characteristic – one which is and isn’t a potential for being a certain way. Let’s not dignify this with the title “paradox”; it is but a lowly contradiction, and one that in any other application we would all dismiss out of hand. Also, notice that this point has nothing to do particularly with theology. It is a serious cost if a theology needs such a questionable claim.

Bowman here urges a false dilemma – either his view of Christ is true, or (if Burke is right) Jesus might have at any moment sinned, thus imperiling God’s whole plan. But this is a mistake. Being able to sin at some time or other isn’t the same as being able to easily sin at any moment. Thus, nothing about Burke’s view commits him to a shaky, easy-to-fall-away Jesus. Nor is it obvious that Jesus or God would have to be 100% certain that Jesus would never sin – it depends on one’s theory of divine providence. Molinists and others would urge that they could be certain of that, even if Jesus was free to sin.

In his comment, Bowman helpfully formalizes the argument:

The anti-Trinitarian argument, superficially, looks unassailable:

P1. God cannot be tempted.
P2. Christ was tempted.
C. Therefore, Christ was not God.

Bowman argues that “being tempted” is equivocal. If it mains actually giving in to a temptation, that P1 is true but P2 is false. But if it means a certain feeling or quality of experience, then P2 is true but (I take it) P1 is false – God can experience that feeling. He urges that James 1:13 can be reading as having to do with giving into temptation.

Be that as it may, what if “tempting” is putting one into a situation in which one has the ability, in that situation, to as it were say yes to a desire to do something wrong? In that sense, Bowman must say that P2 is false. Problem is, this is the sense most readers are going to see in the texts talking of Christ being tempted. I suspect that his merely experiential sense of “being tempted” has been concocted to save his theology – can he point to any case in the Bible or anywhere in the ancient world where “being tempted” is merely experiential (i.e. it merely describes a certain felt quality of experience), and doesn’t imply some actual capacity for and actual pull towards sin?

Finally, Bowman probably holds, like I think most evangelicals, that after our glorification – after you and me are resurrected, and living in the presence of God in the new heavens and the new earth –  we won’t be able to sin. But if he grants this, he grants that a normal human may, by the action of God, be rendered incapable of sinning. So even if he’s right that Jesus was incapable of sinning, that doesn’t show or suggest that he was divine. Moreover, if he grants this, he can’t complain about the alleged weirdness or obscurity of Burke’s claim that Jesus was made able to completely avoid sin by the Holy Spirit. So, does he grant this – that a human may be rendered impeccable?

Next time: history.

[Burke:] “This week I hope Rob will show Biblical evidence for the essential relationship formulae of Trinitarianism:
1. Father = ‘God’, Son = ‘God’ and Holy Spirit = ‘God’
2. ‘God’ = Father + Son + Holy Spirit  . . .

[Bowman] I have already responded to this argument of yours. Your demand that I must prove these two statements “independent of each other” is an absurd demand calculated to place an unreasonable burden on me that you know cannot be met.

As you know, Dave, if statement #1 is true, and if there is only one God (one single eternal divine being), then statement #2 follows. However, you and I already agree that there is only one eternal divine being. Therefore, I do not need to argue for this premise of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Gentlemen, forgive me, but this is confused. We must clarify the meaning of “=” here. I believe that Bowman means  numerical identity in 1. (I’m not sure – I think  his position forces him to be unclear about this – but let that pass.) Let us, then, add the extra premise Bowman mentions (as being held in common). We then get this:

f=g & s=g & h=g

(x)(y) (Dx -> (Dy -> x=y))   [For any x and any y, x is divine only if, if y is divine, then it just is x.]

The first premise is trouble, because it implies f=s=h.

But what to make of “‘God’ = Father + Son + Holy Spirit”. What does the “+” signify? One may (and some will) think of it as the combination of parts, or some kind of conjunction of different things. But this would shift the meaning of “=”. Numerical identity is a one-to-one (actually, always a reflexive) relation – never one-to-many. So if the right hand side is read to mean some kind of conjunction, addition, or combination, then the “=” cannot mean identity. It might mean something like “consists of”, “is a whole constituted by”, or something like that. But whatever it means, it does not logically follow from 1 & 2.

But this interpretation makes 2 irrelevant to 1. It may be that Bowman is thinking this:

Df & Ds & Dh    [Father is divine and Son is divine and Spirit is divine. (This "is" of predication, not the "is" of identity.)]

(x)(y) (Dx -> (Dy -> x=y))

From these, there is no reason to think any interpretation of “g = f+s+h” follows. (First we’d have to clarify the meaning of this latter claim, and then we’d have to add one or more premises, until we had a valid and sound argument.)

But this follows: f =s=h. As Homer Simpson would say: D’oh! Homework for interested readers. Why exactly is this something Bowman can’t accept? (There is more than one reason, I think.) Comment at will.

Bowman then retreats to familiar ground:

What you are really trying to do here is to claim that unless I can show some Bible verses in which the word “God” specifically refers to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together, my case for the doctrine of the Trinity fails.

But that is a red herring. All we need is a seemingly sound argument, for a conclusion with which Bowman agrees, and which is arguably trinitarian! Instead Bowman brings back his apparently inconsistent set of five claims; we’ve looked at those before. Insofar as they seem inconsistent, the argument will not seem sound.

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?

I previously called round 3 a draw. But my call was premature; Burke kept punching, in a long set of comments (#4-15), which substantially strengthened his case. Bowman has left them unanswered for about a week, I believe, as I post this. I re-call this round now for Burke.

Revised score up through round 4:

Bowman: 0
Burke: 3
draw: 1

What he does is address some important texts which as usually read, assert or assume the claims that Jesus created the cosmos, or just that he pre-existed his conception. I can’t summarize Burke’s long exegesis, but I’ll hit a few highlights in this post. What he shows, drawing on some recent scholarship, is that the texts in question can be given non-arbitrary, plausible readings which are consistent with humanitarian christology.

Burke also rebuts some of Bowman’s points re: prayer to Jesus. Bowman argues that Christ can’t be a creature, and must be omniscient (hence divine), if he can hear and answer prayers. This argument is hardly a knockdown one.

How might Bowman know the limits of a glorified human, raised to this pre-eminent position? Given that Jesus is a glorified, immortal human, and “seated at God’s right hand” etc., why couldn’t he have knowledge that far surpasses that of any “normal” human like you or me? Indeed, why couldn’t he be in some sense omnipresent – or at least, widely present? Burke says:

Is it possible for Jesus to hear prayer? I believe so. After all, he received the Holy Spirit without measure (John 3:34); he is perfected and immortal (II Timothy 1:10, Revelation 1:18); he has been exalted to the Father’s right hand (I Peter 3:22) and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him (Matthew 28:18). Does this prove that he is God? Not at all. The capacity to hear believers’ prayers indicates tremendous supernatural power, but it is still a long way short of omniscience (a quality that Jesus clearly lacks; see Matthew 24:36, Mark 11:12-14, Luke 2:52, John 11:34)

But is it proper to pray to Jesus, if he is not God? Burke argues, in the end, yes – “provided that this is not done as an act of religious worship.” I’m not sure what the word “religious” is doing there… What would “non-religious” worship be? Besides, Burke holds that Jesus is worshiped in Revelation 5. I’m not sure why, then, this qualification is there. But in the end Burke, like many unitarians, emphasizes that “in Scripture prayer is predominantly focused on the Father”, while leaving some aspect of this question “to the believer’s conscience.”

Some key passages Burke covers:

1 Cor 8: 4-6 - Burke shows that the NT writers assume the one God of Israel to be one and the same (being, person, god) as the Father of Jesus. He also shows a consistent contrast between the one God (the Father, YHWH) and the one Lord (Jesus, the Son of God). These are assumed, it seems, to be two selves. Burke points out that Paul’s (and others’) salutations habitually mention the two of them. He argues, following McGrath, that here Paul strikingly sets up Jesus alongside the one God; one needn’t read the passage as revealing a new “person” or personality within the divine nature. Moreover, Paul seems to be making a point against polytheism – contra those idolatrous turkeys – there is one one God, the Father. Oh yes, and there’s only one Lord too.

But doesn’t the latter part imply that God created all things through Jesus? No – Burke argues that we should see Paul’s theme of Christ’s “new creation” here – the idea is that God created the cosmos, and Christ has now saved, renewed, or re-created it. Burke lists the main passages with this theme, giving a plausible take on Colossians 1 along the way.

This brings us to Philippians 2, which many see as obviously teaching the heavenly, glorious pre-existence of Jesus, his Incarnation, and his being returned to his formerly glorious state. Burke has a careful, long discussion of this. He urges that it be read as a piece of “Adam christology” – Jesus as the founder of a new race, a second Adam, as it were - and that there is no reference to Christ’s pre-existence in it, properly understood. Further, Burke argues that his reading fits better with Paul’s point – “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…”. In sum,

Rob, your interpretation of Philippians 2 is contradicted by standard theological and lexical authorities. It is inconsistent, unnecessarily complicated, and built on presuppositions which you make no attempt to substantiate.

I propose a simpler exegesis, which retains the OT subtext:

• Despite being in the form of God and exemplifying His image perfectly, Jesus understood that equality with the Father was not something to be grasped at or stolen (unlike Adam, who hoped to seize it).
• Instead, Jesus made himself nothing (unlike Adam, whose pride led to his fall), deliberately adopting a humble appearance as if he was merely a servant, and acting obediently in that role all the way to his death on the cross.
• Consequently, God exalted Jesus and gave him a name above every name, so that everyone will bow the knee at the name of Jesus and confess him as Lord — to the glory of God, the Father.

In his #12 comment, Burke makes the interesting point that trinitarians are very divided in how they understand Philippians 2 – really, in how they understand the incarnation doctrine – recent (only since the 19th c.) “kenosis” theories being a case in point. He also raises the issue of docetism, opining that “Most lay Trinitarians are unconsciously docetic…” This is interesting. Suppose it is true. Why exactly, is this bad? And what is its relevance to the current debate? I suggest that this is worth saying more about.

His exegesis (comments #14-15) of Hebrews 1 is interesting.

Arguably the most striking feature of Hebrews 1 is its explicit subordinationism, with Jesus represented as the exalted Son of God who does not possess his glorified position inherently, but receives it from the Father. He is “appointed heir of all things” (verse 2), and “became superior to the angels” (verse 4) by “inheriting a name superior to theirs” (verse 4). This cannot be true of an eternally-existing deity, as even some Trinitarian commentators have conceded.

But doesn’t v. 2 say that Christ created the world, and doesn’t v. 10-12 apply to Christ a text which obviously originally applied to God, and which assigns him credit for creating? Burke argues on grammatical and contextual grounds that in v. 10-12 the author switches back to the Father, contrasting him with the Son (kai translated “but” rather than “and”).

Verse 2? It should be understood as referring to the “new creation” of Christ, and aion would better be translated “age”, the one initiated by the work of Christ, as it says, “in these last days”. Why? You’ll have so see his full discussion.

Time to quit; this post is long enough, and again, hasn’t attempted to justly summarize this heavy volley from Burke. Besides, round 5 is now up.

Jesus is MELTING!

Looking for a present for that theology geek in your life?

Wear your modalism in t-shirt form.

(Why is this modalism?)

Is this one also modalistic? Discuss. This one surely is.

“Social” trinitarians may prefer this one.

And: for your skate-boarding needs.

Something for paradox lovers and fans of non-standard logics (explanation). Similarly, for people who also like Escher.

Fan of the multiple personality analogy? Look no further.

Here’s the definition of the Council of Chalcedon (sort of) in shirt form.

Then there’s a glaring theological non sequitur, in mug form. And another one, this time on a shirt.

Babies too. People who need help with spelling. Even anti-trinitarians can get in on the action. Happy little monkeys. And people with non-standard “trinities”.

Props to the commenter who can discern the intended message of this one. Or this one. Or this one.

And there’s wearable proof (-texts) that Jesus is God. Lastly, if Jesus just is God, and it was God who miraculously impregnated Mary, then… (Please, no complaints – I’m just the messenger.)

Wasn’t that a fun bit of time wasting? The internet and capitalism rule.

(PS – None of these sellers are affiliated in any way with trinities, nor do I or we get any cut of the $ – this post is just for our mutual amusement.)

First, Burke argues that Jesus’ messianic roles as atoning sin-offering, priest, redeemer, and Davidic king, do not require him to be divine, and further, that the first and last of these require that he is not God. I take it Burke’s point is that they require Jesus to be a human, and that no human is divine. Flag: In this context, the point is question-begging. Bowman no doubt affirms Chalcedon, according to which Jesus has both a divine and a human nature.

Next, Burke has a nice discussion of the Jewish habit, well attested in the NT and in other ancient writings, of talking about what God has predestined as already existing in heaven. This affects what one considers the natural reading of passages like John 17:5 (NIV) “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” Burke nicely sketches the line of thought behind this habit – what is predestined is as good as done, so what is future is moved back, as it were, to the past or present – to a time which is “too late” to avoid. He gives a vivid example from Paul of talking about a future event as present: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus…” (Eph 2:6, NIV)

What is the significance of this? If Burke is right – and this is an interpretive point I’ve seen a number of commenters make, especially outside of polemical contexts – then Bowman can’t simply point to talk of Jesus’ pre-existence, but must also argue that the phenomenon at hand is not in the passage in question. I think Bowman’s best bet would be to concede many examples of this, and retreat to the view that this doesn’t explain all of the pre-existence implying talk in the NT, e.g. Jesus’ statements that he’s come down from heaven, etc.

In the section after this, Burke argues:

Rob has yet to address the Bible’s exclusive emphasis on Jesus’ humanity. He will say he accepts the humanity of Jesus in addition to his alleged deity, but Scripture says nothing of this position.

Flag: begging the question – it is the very matter at issue, whether or not the Bible asserts the divinity of Jesus. Bowman must concede the Bible’s (contra docetism) strong emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, but he need not concede any such “exclusive” emphasis.

And yet, it is striking that the preaching about Jesus in Acts is how it is – it is not what one would expect from a Christian who holds that a crucial point of faith is the “full divinity” of Jesus:

Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead… God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. …Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2: 22-36, NIV, emphases added)

Bowman’s position here differs from the Catholic one, and it seems to me that they have a principled reply to this, whereas Bowman does not. In his view, the Bible rather obviously implies, or can only be understood as teaching, the divinity of Jesus. Consequently, the apostles all did believe this. It would be surprising, then, to see them preach as above. In contrast, the Catholic holds that Mother Church, as much as the apostles, is an instrument of divine revelation, and the divinity of Jesus simply hadn’t been clearly revealed at this point. So perhaps the apostles held to a “primitive” (adoptionist?) christology, whereas later generations of inspired thinkers – bishops, mostly – came to full belief in the divinity of Jesus. I note in passing that Burke doesn’t address this sort of response. (Fair enough – his debate partner isn’t offering it.)

Next, Burke asks: “Why is Jesus never accused of claiming to be God throughout his trial?” Well, it is murky precisely how his trial went, and precisely what the charges were. There’s a suggestion of “blasphemy” but it is unclear to me what the contemporary Jewish concept of that was. Some insist that it must be a response to claims to divinity, while others hold it to be much broader, and could be raised at anyone as it were treading on God’s territory. Bowman assumes the first view, Burke the second. Myself, I see no easy way forward; what do scholars of NT era Judaism say about this?

Burke is right that apparently, Jesus several times denied some sort of equality with God. Trinitarians acknowledge this. Burke says:

The standard response claims he was “denying equality of rank, not equality of nature.” But Jesus had not been accused of claiming equality with nature. Ontology is not at issue here. The Jews had been outraged by Jesus’ apparent usurpation of God’s divine authority and privileges. His defence makes no sense in any other context. (original emphasis)

Flag: begging the question. We need a reason for thinking that ontology is not an issue here, not a mere assertion. I think this connects with the “blasphemy” issue. If it can be shown that Jews of the period, in particular, the Pharisees, had a habit of throwing a “blasphemy” charge at people who merely claimed divine anointing, inspiration, empowerment, etc., then it may be more plausible to read things as Burke does. (Given the Jewish idea of God, would they have likely entertained that this Jewish man before them was him?) But if a “blasphemer” was normally someone claiming to be God, or to have a divine nature, etc. then the point goes to Bowman.

Burke insists that on his view, Jesus was “literally” the Son of God, but not on Bowman’s traditional (small “c”) catholic christology. Why? If I understand him – Burke doesn’t clearly say why – it is because fathering is being part of the cause for a thing’s coming into existence. So a human mom and dad jointly cause junior to exist. And if mom is a Clampitt, and dad is a Mullet, then junior is a descendant of both the Clampitts and the Mullets. Now Jesus is according to the Bible a descendant of David and of God. And so both Mary and God must be causes of Jesus’ coming into existence.

This is an interesting take on the issue – a development of the point in Luke that Jesus will be called “Son of God” because of the miracle wrought by God in Mary’s body.

The traditional catholic view is that Mary supplied the human nature – rational soul and body – which was united to the divine nature. Given this, I’m not sure why Burke demands that Bowman say what on his view it means to say that Jesus is the “Son of David” and “Son of God”.

What does it take to be the “literal father” of someone? It doesn’t strictly require intercourse, as a sperm donor may be a baby’s father. I take it, one must be the source or cause of the sperm which fertilized the egg. So I guess Burke is presupposing an account of just what happened in Mary – she supplied the egg, the spirit of God supplied the sperm. At first I thought that what Burke really wanted to say was that his view better makes sense of why the metaphor of Fatherhood and Sonship is apt when it comes to God and Jesus. But on reflection, no, I guess he is insisting on literal fatherhood of Jesus by God.

Burke may be presupposing that nothing is human unless it exists in some sense because of Adam. That is – something is a genuine human only if its causes can be traced back through Adam. This is somewhat plausible, but is by no means obvious. Take a subordinationist christology where the pre-existing logos takes the place of the human soul in Jesus. Is it obvious that such a being (ancient soul embodied in normal human body) wouldn’t be a human? I don’t think so – but this may be because I don’t think it is obvious whether dualism or physicalism is true. Does Burke, like some of the older Socinians and some present day biblical unitarians, hold that the Bible teaches physicalism about human beings? If not, what is the origin of the soul? If it is generated, as in Bill Hasker’s “emergent dualism” by the body, that’d fit well with his approach. But why think a human must have a soul generated in that way?

This is also relevant to the issue of Jesus dying. Suppose dualism is true. If so, perhaps when I die, my soul continues to exist while my body ceases to live. Burke holds that on the traditional account Jesus couldn’t die. But why not – the divine nature would still exist, but the human nature – or just the body part of it – ceases to function. What’s the problem? Is he presupposing the controversial premise that dying is ceasing to exist?

The trinitarian can agree with Burke’s account of the virginal and miraculous conception of Jesus. But not with the claim about existence and explanation above. The trinitarian view is that the Son would have existence whether or not there had ever been any humans.

The traditional view is that all it takes to be human is to have a human nature (which amounts to having a body and a rational soul). And Jesus has got one. Burke has a philosophical disagreement with this, not merely a biblical one.

On atonement, Burke agrees with the catholic view that to be a proper sacrifice Jesus had to be human. But he doesn’t agree that the sacrifice victim must also be divine.

A couple of traditional reasons for this latter claim are (1) Jesus had to be divine so he could divinize humanity, and (2) Jesus had to be divine because humans’ sins made an infinite stockpile of guilt, which could only be “paid for” by an infinitely valuable sacrifice, which can only a divine one.

It isn’t clear to me what either Burke or Bowman would say to these.

Burke briefly argues that Bowman’s account is contradictory: Jesus could and couldn’t be tempted. Jesus is seen, and is God, but God is never seen. Jesus dies and is also eternal. (As I remarked above, this last one isn’t obviously inconsistent – the point needs arguing.)

Finally, a methodological point from my last post. Burke falls into the same trap as Bomman – of thinking that we can proof-text our way through this dispute. We cannot. Both catholic and humanitarian christologies explain what the scriptures say about Jesus. The question is: which best explains the evidence. Burke and Bowman both realize this, which is why they are at pains to show that their interpretations are non-arbitrary. But equally, both attempt to deduce their position from the texts. In truth, the texts don’t obviously support either view over the other. But this is not to say that neither theory is better than the other. One theory may be a much better explanation than the other; while it has not been shown which it is, in my view Bowman should be worried that his theory seems to be sporting a fatal wound (inconsistency).

In my last post I said that Bowman was focused on explaining the following:

• Jesus is called “Lord” (Gr. kurios) in the NT, and kurios is the Greek translation (in the widely used ancient Septuagint translation) for YHWH in Hebrew.
• Statements and predictions about about YHWH / God in the OT are repeatedly applied to Jesus in the NT.
• The NT implies that prayer to Jesus is a good thing.
• Paul and the author of Hebrews say that Jesus created “all things”.
• Paul says that Jesus is “equal to” God.
• Paul says that all will confess that Jesus is the kurios.
• Jesus has been “exalted to the same level as” God.
• The Son is described as doing a lot of things God is elsewhere described as doing.
• The NT implies that the Son is properly worshiped.

I think I know what Burke would say to a lot of these – a lot of the answers will have to do with the idea that Jesus is an agent who works on behalf of God. But I think the fourth issue and Philippians 2 are pressing, in part because Bowman has pressed them.

This round is not easy to call, but I’m calling it a draw. Bowman has addressed a broad range of phenomena, and yet has not rebutted the very serious charge that his theory is multiply self-contradictory. Burke has rebutted some of the important pre-existence proof texts, and has properly pointed out the focus of the NT on the humanity of Jesus, and has raised the important issue of atonement. He shows that those holding a humanitarian christology can affirm most of what all sides agree the Bible says about the messiah. But he’s begged the question on some core issues, and seems to rely on some controversial philosophical theses about what is essential to human beings and about death, which may or may not be defensible – and which may arguably be beyond the scope of this debate – they meant, I think, to keep it to the Bible.

Score:
Bowman: 0
Burke: 1
draw: 2

In round 3, Bowman ignores these fundamental conceptual difficulties for his position, and soldiers on with exegesis, multiplying words. His interpretive comments are thoughtful and well-motivated, but not always to the point, as Bowman insists on things Burke would surely agree with.  As he goes, commentary style, through each verse, I’ll try to extract his actual argument.

But first, a story. I have a theory about how the light in my fridge turns on and off. I’ve noticed that when the door is almost shut, it goes off just before it’s all the way closed, and that when I open the door, it seems the light is immediately on. My theory is that a there is a gnome who lives in my fridge. Most of the time he sleeps – maybe, somewhere over by the eggs – not sure. But when he hears the door being opened, he very quickly leaps up and pushes the unfindable light switch. He mills around until one shuts the fridge, then pushes that button again. Then he resumes his slumber. And, by the way, he is a non-existent gnome – he’s kind of unusual that way. Truly, gnomes are mysterious creatures.

Note that my theory does explain what it is supposed to – why the lights are on always and only when the door is open. It also explains why, if look around the fridge, I can’t find this gnome. And it also explains why I can’t find the switch he presses – it is, after all, an unfindable one.

If I harped on the considerable merits of this theory, and you had no better theory to rest your mind in, mine could seem pretty impressive. Still, it is a bad theory – we want not only one which explains what we observe, but also one which is true. And my story can’t be true – it is contradictory. It says the gnome doesn’t exist, and yet that he performs those tasks implies that he does. This is a deal-breaker. And even ignoring it, when we get a competing explanation on the table, it’ll turn out that my theory is not the best explanation of what we observe. The competing explanation by the frig repairman is going to slay mine on grounds of simplicity alone. We might also worry about that odd switch I posited, but I’ll leave that aside.

Now to the Bowman. What are his phenomena to be explained? Something like these:

• Jesus is called “Lord” (Gr. kurios) in the NT, and kurios is the Greek translation (in the widely used ancient Septuagint translation) for YHWH in Hebrew.
• Statements and predictions about about YHWH / God in the OT are repeatedly applied to Jesus in the NT.
• The NT implies that prayer to Jesus is a good thing.
• Paul and the author of Hebrews say that Jesus created “all things”.
• Paul says that Jesus is “equal to” God.
• Paul says that all will confess that Jesus is the kurios.
• Jesus has been “exalted to the same level as” God.
• The Son is described as doing a lot of things God is elsewhere described as doing.
• The NT implies that the Son is properly worshiped.

Bowman’s theory, as I read it last time, is that the Son, Jesus, just is (is numerically identical to) God – they are one being, and indeed one self (any self just is a certain intelligent being). Thus this time,

The Son has God’s names, sits on God’s throne, receives worship from God’s most glorious creatures, performs God’s works, and will rule over God’s kingdom forever and ever. Frankly, if this is not the LORD God himself, it is a second God, and we must conclude that the writer is teaching ditheism. (emphasis added)

This theory indeed explains all of the above phenomena.
But when the theory is more fully spelled out, it’ll turn out that on Bowman’s own views, there are some things true of Jesus that are not true of God, and vice-versa. (e.g. sending his only Son, being obedient to God in all things, wanting – during the period when Jesus prayed in the Garden – Jesus to be crucified, being tri-personal, having been raised to the right hand of God – it doesn’t matter how they differ, but only that they differ in at least one way.) It logically follows that Jesus and God and not numerically one. Hence, Bowman will be committed to their being identical, and to their not being identical. But no one wants a demonstrably false explanation; for all its weaponry, this battleship is sunk – not by the enemy sub, but by the captain.

(Sidenote: the FSH modalism Bowman seemed to gesture at in round 1 would get him out of this – but would land him in equally hard problems.)

In his exegesis, Bowman is sometimes tempted to imply that the passage in question just obviously implies – nay, explicitly says – that Jesus is God. I suspect this may be because he’s not very familiar with unitarians’ exegesis of, e.g. Phil 2 (most people are not – indeed, most theologians, apologists, and Christian philosophers are not). But in his better moments, he realizes that he’s not, in the end, forwarding a sound deductive argument for the deity of Jesus, but rather an inference to the best explanation, the best explanation of what the biblical writers say, assuming them to be inspired. He really agrees with Burke, and with most sensible Christians, that theories about Jesus and God should be based on the totality of evidence. And being a reasonable fellow, Bowman sees the futility of proof-text wars.

Is Bowman’s the only explanation? No – Burke has one. Is Bowman’s the best? If I’m right that it is contradictory, it just can’t be – unless all the available contradictions are contradictory, and Bowman’s is somehow better. “Best” in this case won’t mean worthy of belief, though, for nothing which is on the whole obviously false is reasonable for us to believe!

I do think that Bowman shows that given the way they are normally translated and read, the burden is on the humanitarian unitarian (i.e. a Christian who holds Jesus to be a human, to not be divine, and that Jesus existed no earlier than his miraculous conception) to give plausible, well-motivated, non-arbitrary readings of Philippians 2 and Hebrews 1 (and Colossians 1) which don’t say or imply that:

1. The Son of God created the heavens and the earth.
2. The Son existed long before his conception in Mary.

Can Burke do this? And moreover, how does his theory compare?

In the end, “clarity” and “obscurity” are usually subjective judgments that reflect the beliefs of the interpreters more than they inform us about the texts themselves.

I suspect this is going too far, but this isn’t flag-worthy. Yet it will come back to haunt him.

Bowman then argues that we should focus on the most relevant passages, he says, to “the identity of Jesus Christ”. I think he means, the metaphysical status of Jesus. The eight passages he names are certainly important ones, and I agree that any responsible unitarian should pony up plausible, non-arbitrary readings of all of them.

Next, he tells us that

This post will address the texts in Matthew and John, along with an excursus on two texts in John that anti-Trinitarians claim deny that Jesus is God. (emphasis added)

As the whole positive case that the Bible implies the deity of Jesus is in the book (and later in this debate?), Bowman here chooses to play defense.

Let’s take his texts in turn.

• Mt 28:16-20 – Bowman insists that what some disciples doubted was whether or not Jesus should be worshiped. This, to me, is an oddball reading, inserting our theological concerns into the passage. One would think what they doubted was that they were seeing Jesus – evidently he was far off initially, and then in v. 18 he comes closer. Flag: Bowman is flat wrong to assert that “Nothing in the context suggests that what some doubted was… that it was Jesus whom they saw.” If Jesus was God, how could all authority have been given to him (by God)? Bowman wants to say that the incarnate Jesus had humbled himself and so had to be given authority, but I take it this ignores the difficulty. If God, by virtue of his essential attributes, necessarily has all authority, then he can’t lack it, and so can’t receive it from another. It is unclear what Bowman’s answer to this would be. Regarding the seeming baptismal formula, as Bowman reads it, here “Jesus… identifies himself… as the Deity to whom each disciple is to commit himself”. Eh…? Does Bowman really think this is the obvious meaning of the text? Is he that unable to imagine other readings? (I say a few relevant things here.) If so, this tells us more about Bowman, than about the text. Finally, according to Bowman v. 20 says that Jesus is omnipresent - and I assume his point is that only God is omnipresent. But this is too quick – Jesus had a body, so in some sense, he was here (e.g. Galilee) and not there (e.g. Samaria). He’s still got one, albeit a transformed one. Note that it is the risen, glorified Jesus which is in some sense wherever his followers are – but God is supposed to be essentially (and so always) omnipresent. It will have to be, if Jesus is God, that he has always been omnipresent – but now we’re back to the embodiment issue. This is just too quick. And why exactly couldn’t even a creature be in some sense omnipresent, through, say the action of God? Finally, Bowman urges that all this confirms his reading of Mt 1:23, that the author means in calling Jesus “Immanuel” that Jesus is God. Yet again, a draw, bordering on question-begging or special pleading – Burke has explained why it is not arbitrary to read “Immanuel” as not implying that.
• John 1 – Bowman can’t get himself to take a unitarian reading of John 1, like that of Anthony Buzzard, seriously. He’s stuck thinking that they are simply overlooking the obvious meaning of v. 1-3. It is not clear to me that he understands their reading. Briefly, it is this. The Word / Logos is a divine attribute, mildly personified. (Compare: Lady Wisdom’s speech in Proverbs 8.) It’s always been around, and is not someone other than God (v.3), though it is “with” him (v.2) – with him as an attribute is with what has it. By it/him God made all. It is this which “became incarnate” in the man Jesus. (v.14) Basically at v. 14, the subject switches from God’s Wisdom to Jesus the expression or embodiment of it. Whatever the merits of this reading, it seems consistent, and the tie-ins with Proverbs 8 make it far from ad hoc. In contrast, Bowman offers the sketch of a reading which is apparently contradictory and the start and at the end of the chapter. Bowman appeals to paradox (apparent contradiction) but doesn’t quite say what this is. (Doing that would sink his reading.) Evidently the starting paradox is this: the Word just is God (v.2) and is “with God” (v. 3) even though nothing can be properly said to be “with” itself. While he glosses this as the Father being with the Son (seemingly consistent) evidently, as each just is God, that’s where the paradox arises. So: f = g, s = g, and yet f ≠ s. This is indeed an apparent contradiction. But it is also a real one, and demonstrably so (transitivity of =). Insisting on a controversial textual reading in 1:18, Bowman finds the same contradiction there. Poor John – so confused! Flag: by the principle of charity, an inconsistent reading should be avoided if at all possible, and Bowman has not even come close to showing that his is the best of all available  readings.
• John 20:26-31 – Bowman asserts that “in biblical language ‘my God’ can only refer (on the lips of a faithful believer) to the Lord God of Israel.” This of course is precisely what unitarians deny, and Bowman merely asserts it here. If “god” applies more widely than only to God, why not “my god”?  Flag: begging the question. Also, Bowman mocks as “tortured” the reading that Thomas here refers dually to Jesus (Lord) and the Father (God). I agree with Bowman that on grammatical grounds this reading is less likely, but I don’t think it is mockable – it seems to have been a slogan in the first century that Christians serve, as Paul says, one God and also one Lord. (1 Cor 8:6) – also share one baptism, one spirit, and one “body”. Bowman detects the same paradox as above, and again seems to think that this is not a liability of his reading. He subtly helps himself to some of the old qua-nonsense: qua human Jesus honors and worships God, but qua divine Son he does not. I don’t have the patience now to parse what this might mean; let it suffice to say that this talk seems to just thinly paper over the contradiction that Jesus does and doesn’t worship God, or does and doesn’t have a God. This all, to Bowman, is simply a humble acceptance of what the text clearly says “tensions” and all – declining to rationalistically explain its contents away.
• John 10:22-39 -  Bowman, like many readers, insists that Jesus’ Jewish interlocutors, who’ve been portrayed as stupidly misunderstanding him in several previous incidents, surely got it right that he was claiming to be, or to be in some sense “equal to” God. Surely those guys couldn’t have misunderstood Jesus. Jesus, Bowman says, doesn’t here deny that he’s God. That’s right. What he denies, is that it is blasphemous to claim that he’s the Son of God, for even lesser men are called by a stronger title – “gods”! Burke’s treatment makes sense of Jesus’ argument here; as far as I can see, Bowman’s doesn’t. Bowman wants to read “The Father and I are one” as an allusion to the Shema – i.e. they are one god. (This again, probably following Jesus’ opponents.) This, even though Jesus seems assume his distinctness from God in the preceding verse. I guess if Bowman is right, God gave the “sheep” to himself, and even though Father and Son are “in” each other, they just are each other. And of course, they are not (as some things are true of one, which are not true of the other). John, after all, loves paradoxes.
• Finally, another favorite unitarian proof text: John 17:1-5. Bowman reads this is if Jesus were asserting that the Father is divine. He then spins, surely, this is consistent with it also being true that Jesus is divine. Sure, but that’s not what is going on here – Jesus is not talking about the Father here. He’s addressing the Father, and says to him among other things that he, the Father, is “the only true god”. Whether this means that the Father is numerically identical to God/Yahweh or that the Father is the only divine being seems not to matter. If the Father is either one, then anyone else is not – the Father is the only one. And in addressing the Father second person, Jesus is presupposing that the Father, the one true god, is someone else – someone other than Jesus. Bowman reads this text, in the end, as assuming that the Son is not the Father, but each of them is identical to God (and so, it follows that each is identical to the other. If A = C, and B = C, then A = B.) But of course, they differ. Again, John, as Bowman reads him, is the great self-contradictor.
  

While Bowman would think that an evident contradiction would doom, say, a Buddhist or a Jehovah’s Witness to humiliating defeat, when it is his contradiction, apparently it is a sign that he’s onto some profound truth. Flag: special pleading.

I previously wondered what precisely Bowman thinks “the” doctrine of the Trinity is. I’m now inclined to think that at least sometimes he holds it to be no more or less than this inconsistent tetrad of claims (they can’t all be true – from the truth of any 3, it follows that the 4th is false).

1. f = g
2. s = g
3. h = g
4. f ≠ s ≠ h

If this is what the Trinity doctrine is, Christianity’s enemies can rest easy, for it is demonstrably the case that 1-4 are not all true. Atheists, Muslims, Jews, take note – you can cite Bowman for support. Sure, he can insist that the contradiction is merely apparent, but this is about as convincing as the mighty Oz howling “Ignore the man behind the curtain!”

Ironically, Bowman seems to think these texts are really, really clear (despite his warning above) – so clear that he can rest in an evidently contradictory reading of them. Sorry, but a really clear contradiction is an interpretation buster – unless you are prepared to admit that the author is simply confused. Evident inconsistency is evident falsehood.

While round 1 was a draw, all things considered, I’d have to call round 2 slightly in favor of  Burke. He lays out a broad if incomplete case, and effectively rebuts some of the other side’s proof-texts for the divinity of Christ, whereas Bowman essentially says “the positive case is in the book”, and then gives his readings of about 5 central texts. Burke ignores some of the tough problems for his unitarian christology, but Bowman ends up at several crucial junctures assuming that his (implicitly contradictory) readings are rather obviously correct. Staking all on a few texts, he seems to hand Christianity’s opponents a big gift on a platter.

Thus, my score so far:
Bowman: 0
Burke: 1
draw: 1

Update: in comments on Rob’s post, Dave says a lot more. In #6 he explains the meaning of the Greek words translated “worship” etc, and thus why he’s unconvinced by this argument: Jesus must be fully divine because he is properly worshipped. In comments #7-10 he says a lot more about the unitarian reading of John 1 I briefly explain above, and in #10 he addresses Jesus being called “theos” is John 20. Along the way he appeals to some serious scholars, including the super heavyweight Dunn, who it seems has a new book, not yet available in the US, on the issue of whether Jesus was worshiped in NT times. In #11-12 he revisits John 17 and other passages, highlighting the idea that Jesus is a special agent, acting on God’s behalf. In #10 he pleads:

Please consider if a non-paradoxical answer may be more likely!

It’s all worth a careful read.

• In a lot of the piece, Burke lays out his positive views about Jesus. This should give a lot of people pause; it is often assumed, contrary to the long but largely forgotten history of this minority report, that unitarians are mere “deniers”, or that they can be lumped together with the amorphous “skeptics” who appear in apologetics writings, or that they are theological “liberals”, or that they are Unitarian Universalists. Not so – arguably, Burke affirms all the really obvious doctrines of the New Testament – messiah, mediator, resurrection, atonement, etc. - roughly, all the items in the “Apostles’” Creed. Burke defends what used to be called a “humanitarian” christology – that Jesus was a human, and did not exist before his miraculous conception in Mary. It would be misleading to describe his position as being that Jesus was “just a man”. In Burke’s view, he’s far from being just a “great teacher” among many, with peers like the Buddha  and Muhammad, or even being merely a prophet.
• It is striking to what degree Burke simply ignores some influential (but now largely forgotten) patristic ideas, to wit: the Jesus’ ministry obviously manifested the divine nature (through, e.g. his miracles), that Jesus must be divine so as to be able to divinize humanity, that Jesus and not the Father was the one who interacted with the Jews in OT times, that the title “Son of God” implies having the divine nature, that what is “divine” must be absolutely unchanging and simple. I say this more by way of observation than criticism. With the exception of the first, I expect that Bowman will largely ignore them as well.
• Flag: Burke says that the risen, glorified Jesus is “divine”. What does he mean by this, and whatever is meant, is there scriptural warrant for it? We know he doesn’t mean to say Jesus just is (is numerically identical to) God. Does he mean that Jesus has some, or most, or all (surely not all) the divine attributes? Or is it just that Jesus is somehow related to God? (If so, how?)
• Burke says “Rob and I agree [that] some passages apparently call Jesus “God” literally, directly, and without qualification.” I think some care needs to be taken with this point. If someone predicates divinity of Jesus, this may be done literally or not, directly or not, qualifiedly or not. But if someone addresses Jesus using the name or title “God”, one is not describing Jesus at all, but rather addressing him. There may be some explanation why you used that title, but there is no question about whether you are speaking literally or not, etc. The point may be easier to see in a non-Jesus example; consider an Indian guru, like, say this one. Two disciples address him as “God”. One does this because he thinks the guru is an avatar of God. But the other does it because he thinks God works through this guru, or because he thinks the guru is godly or god-like. One shouldn’t say that the first is speaking literally, the second non-literally. Again, suppose you address Andy Kaufman as “Elvis”. This could be because you thought he was a reincarnation of Elvis, but it would more likely be because you thought the name just fit. No, I’m not saying that Jesus was a God-impersonator! I’m saying that we often take names first used for one thing, and then use them to refer to something else, based on this something else being related to the first thing in some way.
• So many, not all, but many of the passages at issue involving Jesus – particularly the less disputable ones in Heb 1 and John 20, involve this – using “God” as a name or title for Jesus. The question, of course, is why is this done. What does this usage presuppose, or what is the best explanation of it? I don’t think Burke really suggests an explanation. I was expecting to see something about Jesus resembling God, which seems a central theme in Paul and John (e.g. exact image and likeness, etc, and  he who has seen me has seen the Father) This would merit a flag, except that Burke does point out that according Jesus himself, men may properly be referred to as “gods” (John 10), and that it is clear that sometimes in the OT various humans are called “god” or “gods”. (We’ve discussed this before.)
• Flag: after listing Jesus’ NT titles, he says “There is no suggestion here that Jesus is God.” Well, there is at least a suggestion that he is, from the application of “Lord” to him. As countless theologians have pointed out, this is the word which sort of euphemistically translates or stands in for the name “Yahweh” in the Septuagint (ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew OT). In Paul, sometimes it is not clear who is meant by “Lord” (Father ? Son?), and this is, I think, surprising, and in need of explanation. Again, prophecies which in the OT predict things about Yahweh are applied to Jesus as fulfilled by him in the NT – this too needs explaining.
• In much of the 2nd half of his entry, Burke goes through various “Jesus is God” proof texts, and using trinitarian biblical scholarship, pretty effectively shows that most of them are far from decisive, because of translation, textual, or interpretive issues. He does a particularly good job dismantling the lame argument that Jesus’ title “Immanuel” (meaning “God with us” or “God is with us”) implies that Jesus is God. This doesn’t work, any more that this argument: “Elijah” means “Yahweh my God”, therefore Elijah is Yahweh our God. Again, his treatment of John 1:18 was fair and sure-footed.
• Final flag: Burke doesn’t address some difficult passages for his view, namely passages which seem to imply Jesus’ existence before his conception. And in particular, passages which seem to say that Jesus created the universe. Again, although he mentions the text, he doesn’t tell us how he reads John 1, which most trinitarians consider a slam dunk for their side. Perhaps these will be addressed somewhere in what follows.

1. There is one (true, living) God, identified as the Creator.
2. This one God is the one divine being called YHWH (or Jehovah, the LORD) in the Old Testament.
3. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is God, the LORD.
4. The Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is God, the LORD.
5. The Holy Spirit is God, the LORD.
6. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each someone other than the other two.

When a philosopher sees this, he quotes that great thinker, Bill Clinton: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” 1 is clear – that is the “is” of existence. 2 is clear – that is the “is” of identity (aka absolute, Leibnizian, or numerical identity). But 3-6 are mushy.

• One option would be to read the “is”s is 3-5 and the “are” as involving identity (affirmed in 3-5, denied in 6). This would be straight up inconsistent. From f = g, s = g, and h = g, it logically follows that f = s = h – but on this reading, this last thing is denied in 6.

• Another option, which I doubt Bowman has in mind, would be to read 3-6 as involving only relative identity. 3-5 would say that the various persons are the same being as God, but 6 would say that no two of them are the same person as each other. This might sound like just what the doctor ordered, but one has to be an uber-sophisticate in logic and metaphysics to pull this off. 2 still seems to involve non-relative identity (numerical sameness, not relativized to a kind). Normally, we understand relative identity talk as really involving absolute identity. “Dubya is the same person and George W. Bush.” This implies that Dubya is a person, Bush is a person, and Dubya = Bush. So if the Father and Son are the same god, this would mean that the Father is a god, the Son is a god, and the Father = the Son. D’oh! A relative identity theorist either has to argue that there’s no such thing as absolute identity (=) or specify how it relates to relative identity relations.
• If I had to guess what he’s thinking, I would guess, based on some things he says about the term “person”: as follows. 2 does involve the concept of identity. 3-6 involve modes of this thing mentioned in 1 & 2. Bowman thinks the Father is a mode of God, a way God is. And so on for the Son and Spirit. And these are three different modes (6). In short, the Trinity doctrine is that a perfect self, God, exists eternally in three different modes, perhaps personalities, or something like personalities.

Bowman then:

• Flies the evangelical flag – inerrancy, sola scriptura.
• Denies not “hyper-Biblicism” (no doctrine is authoritative unless explicitly spelled out in the Bible).
• Heads off the lame-o anti-trinitarian argument that we ought not use any non-biblical language. (Flag – surely this is a straw man in this debate, as is the previous claim above.)
• Argues that the Shema is consistent with unitarian and trinitarian theology. The latter, I think, is unclear. And I don’t think he takes a stand on precisely how he thinks that passage should be understood.

Then, a crucial point:

I could discuss other proof texts that Biblical Unitarians and other non-Trinitarians cite as proof that God is a unipersonal being, but the result will be the same in each case: such texts typically prove that God is a single being but do not address the specific Trinitarian claim that God is a unipersonal being. Non-Trinitarians typically argue, for example, that it is obvious from the pervasive use of singular pronouns for God (I, he, him, his, you [sing.]) throughout the Bible that God is only one person. This argument would be sound if by “person” we meant an individual being. However, in Trinitarian theology, a divine “person” is not an individual being, because God is one being, not three. The doctrine of the Trinity cannot be refuted by assuming that it is false; and this is what non-Trinitarians do when they assume that a person can only be an individual being.

Flag – no, two flags.

• First, Bowman still doesn’t clarify what he means by “person”. Hence, it is not clear what claims he will be arguing is implied by the Bible.
• Second, how is the trinitarian definition of “person” relevant to interpretation of the Hebrew word for “him”, “his” etc. as used by an ancient Jew? I don’t see any fallacious question-begging here by the other side. Suppose you were trying to figure out the views of some local Jedis – what they think this “Force” thingee is. Do they call it “it”, or “him”, or “her”. If one of the latter two, they are assuming it is a self. As Ricky Ricardo would say, Bowman has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. (This, by the way, was not a problem for early catholic theologians, as like NT writers, they identified the one God with the Father of Jesus – which I assume Bowman does not.)

Finally, Bowman beats the mysterian drum. He argues that because God can’t be completely understood, we’ll run into apparent contradictions in thinking about him.

Flag – that doesn’t obviously follow – apparent non sequitur fallacy here. And his examples not having to do with the Trinity don’t seem apt.

He confesses, then, that there are “logical difficulties” in his view – that is, apparent contradictions. If so, then my guess above must be wrong, for it is apparently consistent. But Bowman doesn’t tell us what these are.

Flag – if you admit that your view is apparently contradictory, please say where exactly – this will help us to understand your view! He darkly hints that in 6 above “person” has “a somewhat different connotation as compared to its use for human beings”. I don’t think he means to say “connotation”… but in any case, how do these meanings of “person” differ? I the mundane realm, a person is a self, a thinking thing, a substance with intelligence and will, roughly speaking. What, in contrast, is a divine “person”?

He then inveighs against “approaches to Scripture that a priori disallow all mystery, paradox, or incomprehensibility”. Flag – isn’t this a red herring (an irrelevance, mere distraction)? Is there some reason to think that Burke does this? I assume that Bowman and Burke both agree that apparent inconsistency and unclarity and not good things in a theory, but bad things, and that they should not be lightly allowed.

I am concerned here only to plead that non-Trinitarians not dismiss the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other doctrine, merely because it is difficult to understand. In the context of this debate, I am anticipating and arguing against a priori objections that amount to saying that the Trinity cannot be true regardless of what the Bible may say.

Flag – Straw man? Red herring? Even poisoning the well? He pins all of the above of on unitarian author Donald Snedeker. Well, never mind that – you’re debating Burke here, and Snedecker ain’t Burke.

Of course, if what is meant by “the Trinity doctrine” really is contradictory, then no, it can’t be true, no matter what any person or book says. But, is it? That is, is the trinitarian doctrine under debate here consistent or not? If I really knew what Bowman had in mind, I could venture a firm opinion.

I thought the point here was to expound his positive views and background assumptions. Instead, he’s fired off a lot of rounds, it seems to me, prematurely and haphazardly. Settle that happy trigger finger down, Cowboy!

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.

Here at trinities, we’ll offer summaries and philosophical commentary on each round.

Feel free to weigh in with your views on who, if anyone, wins each stage of the debate. As always, your initial comment must be approved. But then following comments – if you utilize the same self-identifying info – should sail through automatically.

In one corner, is experienced evangelical author,  apologist, and debater Rob Bowman. In the other, Christadelphian pastor and “biblical unitarian” David Burke. The Christadelphians are an interesting group with an interesting history that we don’t have time to go into here. Let it suffice to say that like many non-mainstream Christian groups, they hold that the Bible, properly understood, doesn’t really support the above formulas. In short, they are unitarians, and their group arose in mid-19th c. America.

Saith Bowman,

For the purposes of this debate, we will be focusing exclusively on defending our respective theologies biblically. This means that in our debate we are not supposed to address concerns about the development of each other’s theology in church history. We are also not supposed to discuss philosophical arguments for or against each other’s theological model. These historical and philosophical issues may be worthy of attention in their own right, but they are not germane to this debate.

(NOTE: After I posted the above comment, Dave emailed me to let me know that he had not understood the ground rules of the debate to preclude reference to historical or philosophical issues. We discussed this question and agreed to move forward despite our differences over it.) (emphases added)

When I read the above, I thought, uh oh. How are they going to keep “philosophical” moves out of the game? Will they not be evaluating arguments? Will there be no differences regarding the epistemic status of “mysteries”? If they got beyond proof-texting, then won’t they of necessity be employing non-biblical premises?

Round 1 is here and here. Commentary to follow.

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.