Prothero on Christianity, Jesus, and the Trinity (Dale)

Sep 272011
 

Stephen Prothero, of Boston University, is the rare professor who is to a household name and face. He’s been on all sorts of media, and is an able spokesman for the cause of religious literacy. Preach it!

His latest book, God is Not One, is possibly the best introduction to a variety of religious traditions for the general reader. It’s well-written, informative, humorous, apt at comparing religions, and I would say pretty fair. I recommend it overall. The book is worth it just for his bashing of the soft-headed pluralism that infects so many popular books on religion. (Ch.1)

Less positively, Prothero’s outlook on religion is colored in many ways by the fact that he is an ex-Christian, having been raised as a mainline church. He sports of whole range of attitudes I see as deriving from this, or from this plus our present intellectual scene. Also, it strikes me that his childhood faith he left behind was just that. In any case, he has a nice way of wearing his inclinations on his sleeve. An author should be opinionated.

Here I want to ask: Is Prothero both fair and accurate in how he presents Christian belief? He says:

…the Christianity… of my childhood… was all about the doctrine of the Incarnation, which to me was as mysterious as adult life in general. According to this core Christian teaching, at the fulcrum of world history God took on the form of a helpless baby, born of a frightened young woman and held in the rough hands of a carpenter. “What if God was one of us?” asks the Joan Osborne pop song. Christianity responds, “He was!” (p. 68)

Well, is.

Again, at one level,  Continue reading »

A movie with another Trinity: The Ramayan (1986) in 88 minutes (Dale)

Sep 052011
 

Ram, avatar of Vishnu

For those who enjoyed my previous posts (here and here) on avatars in Hinduism, here’s something I’ve done recently for a class I’m teaching – excerpts of the long (78 part!) ultra-hit Indian tv series Ramayan into movie form. (Here’s the whole series.) Yes, I watched the whole thing, over a couple of months, so you don’t have to. Grab some popcorn and check it out. My notes in the comment below will help you to bridge the plot-gaps.

This doesn’t directly have to do with Christian theology. My interest here was to illustrate the Hindu tradition for my students, specifically a popular, present-day, devotional Vaishnavite form.

Still, one can fruitfully apply philosophical analysis and comparison with Christian theology here:

  • What’s presented here, despite appearances, is supposed to ultimately be monotheism. The one god is Vishnu, and the other gods and goddesses are just manifestations of him, him acting in different forms. This is clear when at one point the three functions of creation, preservation, and destruction are assigned to Vishnu. It’s modalism on a massive scale.
  • The series asserts the primacy of Vishnu, even while bending over backwards to exalt Shiva as a great god and proper object of worship (and also the Great Goddess). He’s a perfect self, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, a se.
  • Ram (aka Rama, pictured here – but in the movie, he’s not blue) is Vishnu’s manifestation as a human being, Vishnu incarnate, or in their terms, a descent (avatar) of Vishnu. The screenplay reflects the tensions Continue reading »

DANIEL WATERLAND ON “THE FATHER IS THE ONLY GOD” TEXTS – PART 2 (DALE)

Jul 162011
 

The Clarke-Waterland duel went on for many, many pages in several books, getting increasingly snippy.

Last time I said that I thought Waterland was a social-mysterian-trinitarian. But I’m not so sure about the “social” part! He’s very unclear on whether the “Persons” are selves. They’re different somethings, in any case. But in this series, I’m sticking to an exegetical issue.

Here are excerpts of Waterland’s second salvo about the “only God” texts.

[Clarke] had produced John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, which prove that the Father is styled, sometimes, the one God, or only true God; and that he is the God of the Jews, of Abraham, etc. I asked how those texts proved that the Son was not? You say… “very plainly… Can the Son of the God of Abraham (Acts 3:13) be himself that God of Abraham, who glorified his Son?” But why must you here talk of that God, as if it were in opposition to this God, supposing two Gods; that is, supposing the thing is question. …I tell you that this divine Person is not that divine Person, and yet both are one God… (A Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity in Waterland’s Vindications of Christ’s Divinity, 422-3, original italics, bold added, punctuation slightly modernized)

This is wheel-spinning. Clarke does, and Waterland does not take the passages in question to identity (assert to be numerically identical) the Father and Yahweh.

Clarke had asked whether Waterland thought that the term “Father” in these texts actually includes, i.e. refers to, the Son as well. Waterland clarifies, Continue reading »

Daniel Waterland on “The Father is the only God” texts – Part 1 (Dale)

Jul 142011
 

Daniel Waterland (1683-1740) was by all accounts the most important disputant of Samuel Clarke about the Trinity.

Waterland spent his career at Cambridge, where he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Vice-Chancellor, and also serving as a Chaplain to the King, and as an Anglican clergyman in a number of cities.

He had a good reputation, and was an energetic, but normally cool-headed controversial/polemical writer (aganist Clarke, and other other theological topics, against other respected men), and he gained somewhat of a reputation in Anglican circles as a defender of catholic orthodoxy.

Many, including himself, contemplating his becoming a bishop, but in 1740 he died after complications, seemingly, from surgeries on an ingrown toenail in one of his big toes! He was survived by his wife of 21 years. (His only children were his books.)

I’d describe Waterland’s views on the Trinity as social, with a liberal dose of negative mysterianism. Like Clarke, he insists that his is the ancient catholic view, and much of the dispute concerns pre-Nicene fathers. Like Clarke, he wants to stick to those fathers and to the Bible, and takes a dim view of medieval theology.

About the pre-Nicene catholic “fathers,” I’d say both Clarke and Waterland somewhat bend the material to their own ends (I mean, they tend to see those authors as supporting their view, and being perhaps more uniform than they were), but I think Waterland bends the materials more. In his view, catholics had always believed the Three to be “consubstantial” in a generic sense, yet which, somehow, together with their differences of origin, makes them but one god. Like Swinburne and Clarke, he agrees that the Father is uniquely the “font of divinity.” He continually hammers Clarke with the claim that there’s no middle ground between the one Creator and all creatures.

In this series, I’ll examine the way he deals with some favorite unitarian proof-texts, which, unitarians think plainly assert the numerical identity of the Father with the one true God, Yahweh. According to Waterland, these unitarians are making a mistake like the one I made.

You [i.e. Clarke] next cite John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, to prove, that the Father is sometimes styled the only true God; which is all that they prove. Continue reading »

Classifying Mormon Theism – a paper by Carl Mosser (Dale)

Jun 302011
 

Carl Mosser teaches theology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania.

I recently read, and profited much from his “Classifying Mormon Theism.“ Check it out.

It’s part of a book dedicated to the work of the unique Mormon philosopher of religion David Paulsen.

Mosser’s paper is of interest for several reasons:

First, is Mormonism a sort of polytheism, monotheism, or what? You’ll have to read the paper to get Mosser’s answer. But here’s a teaser: “It is inappropriate to classify Mormonism as a polytheistic religion. To do so conveys highly misleading connotations.” (p. 23, emphasis added)

Second, what is monotheism anyway? What is a god?

Third, how did the ancients, including the authors of the Bible use “God” and related terms? For example, how was the Greek theos used? And how does this compare to our usage?

I don’t think I agree with all of Mosser’s conclusions; but there is a lot going on here, and there is much that is useful.

 

 

 

WHAT IS THE TRINITY? A DIALOGUE WITH STEVE HAYS – PART 3 (DALE)

Jun 292011
 

Yet another round from Steve Hays.

This is my last entry in the discussion; I may or may not comment, but no more posts.

Again, this is what I hear from him:

  • Yes, the divine nature is a universal, shared by the Three. But let’s not make any Platonic assumptions about forms/universals being in some other realm than what has them, or being more fundamental.

Indeed, let’s not.

Are the persons parts of the Trinity, for him?

He brings up the Mandelbrot set. This is an abstract object. It doesn’t have parts, but rather members. Is he suggesting that the Trinity is a set, with members rather than parts? That it has infinite members? I don’t know.

Then, a digression about analogy. Of course, my point was: don’t you think God is literally a self? (Not: Is God analogous to a self?)

Perhaps he assumes that all terms that apply to God do so only analogically. Continue reading »

WHAT IS THE TRINITY? A DIALOGUE WITH STEVE HAYS – PART 2 (DALE)

Jun 282011
 

Last time, what I thought I heard from Steve was this (this is my summary):

In sum, the one God is a perfect being, a perfect self, who is the Trinity. He has within himself three parts – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these parts fully has the (universal) divine nature, and so, each of the essential divine attributes. Each is a divine self. And these three parts are indistinguishable from one another, or nearly so, though they be numerically distinct.

Steve has now responded twice, here and here. These contain a lot of extraneous material, which I’ll pass by. My question is, what did I get wrong above? Here’s what I hear (bulleted):

  • No, the Persons are not exactly alike. Each has a property the other two lack.
  • “they share a “numerically identical” nature”

Right – “nearly so.”

Because he says this nature is shared, I’m going to infer that it is a universal – something capable of being had by multiple subjects.

  • He wonders why I’m hearing things in terms of part and whole.

Steve, it’s not because you think God has multiple attributes. (Yes, I too reject the classical doctrine of simplicity, though I don’t think God has parts.) Rather, I’m trying to figure out what the relation is, in your view, between God/The Trinity and those three Persons. If it isn’t whole-parts, help me out!

  • The Persons are so alike that any one “represents” either of the others.
  • I don’t know what Tuggy means by “self.”

Sure you do Continue reading »

What is the Trinity? A Dialogue with Steve Hays – Part 1 (Dale)

Jun 272011
 

Prolific blogger (at Triablogue) Steve Hays and I have recently been discussing various things.

At the end of a recent exchange, I basically said: Dude, I don’t know what you think “the” doctrine of the Trinity is. What, in your view, does it mean to say that God is a Trinity?

He’s now responded here.

In this post, I try to understand just what he’s claiming, in other words, what he takes trinitarianism (rightly understood) to be.

This is a bit risky, because I think he’s confused about the concept of identity, and I’m trying to hear a self-consistent view here.

The first job in critical thinking is carefully listening to what the source at hand is saying. Here I listen carefully, editing out a lot of his methodological musings and terminological quibbles, trying to get to the meat of his view.

I think the meat starts here: Continue reading »

Linkage: Dialogue at Triablogue (Dale)

Jun 182011
 

I’ve been commenting at Triablogue, in typical long-winded fashion, on posts by Steve Hays.

Here, and here.

There’s some heat in addition to light, but it gets better as it goes on, and the inimitable James Anderson weighs in.

We discuss probably the favorite unitarian proof-text, John 17:3, as well as contradictions and methodological things.

Perhaps the most interesting point is Steve’s & James’s desire to somehow separate concern with consistency from exegesis. I think that isn’t, can’t, and ought not be done.

Check it out.

Update: some 4 posts so far. Have left lengthy comments.

Update: next to last installment.

Update: last.

THE EVOLUTION OF MY VIEWS ON THE TRINITY – PART 8 (DALE)

Jun 072011
 

Last time I talked about Dallas Willard. This time, another great Christian thinker, who I discovered some time around 1998, and am still wrestling with today.

Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) was one of the all-time great philosophical theologians. He was a greatly respected Anglican minister, and probably would have become archbishop of Canterbury if he hadn’t published on the Trinity. He was a younger friend of the famous scientist Isaac Newton, and became the main expositor of Newton’s science and the metaphysics and theology underlying it. He was also a wily metaphysician and an impressively learned scholar, capable of wielding a thousand textual facts to mount an argument.

In 1705 Clarke became famous for his still studied classic, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. This is a big, developed presentation of a cosmological argument for the existence of exactly one “necessary” and moreover perfect being. In my view, it is not entirely successful, but it is impressive, and the most developed cosmological argument ever.

For whatever reasons, though probably in part, his interactions with his friends Newton and William Whiston, Clarke plunged into the Bible and patristics, and came up with finely honed views on the Trinity, along the lines of the early (c. 150-350) “fathers.”  This he published in his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the first edition of which was in 1712. This is his other, neglected, lost classic. It created quite a stir in early 18th c. England. Clarke narrowly avoided losing his job over the controversy. But here I’ll stick to its effect on my thinking.

In the first 35 pages, Clarke lays out some 441 passages in the NT, in which the Father either “is stiled the one or only God” (1), or Continue reading »

THE EVOLUTION OF MY VIEWS ON THE TRINITY – PART 6 (DALE)

May 052011
 

Last time, c. 1998-2001, I was a social trinitarian along the lines of Swinburne. While I was on the job market in 1999-2000, my former professor Stephen T. Davis was kind enough to invite me and a friend to attend the Incarnation summit, a follow up to the earlier interdisciplinary Trinty Summit. This was a great privilege, and I pretty much just observed. But I remember thinking about the Trinty there, scribbling notes and logical formulas on paper as I sat through long sessions, even passing a few to Dan Howard-Snyder, who I first met there, and instantly liked.

Thanks be to God, later in the Spring of 2000, I was hired for a tenure track teaching job. I paid my dues prepping numerous classes, bought a more serious winter jacket, and really learned how to shovel snow.

In the Spring of 2001, I wrote the first version of what eventually became my “Unfinished Business” paper, and presented it at an SCP meeting in Rochester, NY. I must have sent this at some point to my friend Stephen Davis, because later in the Spring I received an unexpected email from Richard Swinburne saying he’d been told I had a good paper on the Trinity, and asking me if I wanted to attend an SCP conference in, of all places, Moscow, Russia! My paper was a bit… un-Orthodox. (Short synopsis – social theories don’t work, “Latin” theories don’t work… What gives?) Even the old ladies who translated my paper into Russian said, “Duh, it’s a mystery!”, so I decided I needed to think more about that.

At the end of “Unfinished Business” I allude to a theory that I take to be a neglected, but arguably orthodox Trinity theory. I had in mind Continue reading »

Origen: the Son is not the Father (Dale)

Apr 192011
 

Of all the ancient catholic “fathers” I’ve read, Origen (c.185-254) is the most impressive as a scholar.

It’s not that I usually agree with him – any non-Platonist is going to choke on many of the dishes he’s serving, and I think that most today would take issue for some his ways of interpreting the Bible. But he has vast knowledge, he makes pretty careful distinctions, he knows how to argue, and is just a much more developed and original thinker than most. Any contemporary who was going to square off with him either did or should have considered him a formidable opponent.

He wrote, or rather dictated, a vast amount – evidently, he did little else. Some think he may have been the most prolific person in antiquity. We still have a fair number of texts from him.

He’s historically important for many reasons, but for this post, what’s most important is that in the 3rd century he was considered a stalwart of mainstream (“catholic”, or “proto-orthodox”) Christianity.

Lately I’ve been reading Origen’s Commentary on John, as translated by Ronald E. Heine, who by way, I have found very helpful. He too is a first-rate scholar.

Evidently, passage here is directed against certain monarchians who thought (or at least, were alleged to think) that the Father = the Son, i.e. that the Son is the Father himself and vice versa. This passage struck a nerve with me, as it reminded me of conversations I’ve had.

The references in brackets are from Heine’s footnotes. Continue reading »

Linkage: Brandon reviews a book on polytheism (Dale)

Apr 052011
 

 

How many gods are too many?

1? (atheism)

2? (monotheism)

Or: Bring ‘em on – there can never be too many! Woohoo! (polytheism)

On his blog Siris our friend Brandon Watson has been doing a book review of an interesting book by a polytheist named John Michael Greer, called A World Full of Gods.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about monotheism and polytheism, and I think this looks interesting.

Check it out.

The Evolution of my Views on the Trinity – Part 4 (Dale)

Mar 232011
 

As I finished my B.A. in Philosophy at Biola, I decided on graduate school, but only applied to some southern California schools. I think because of our church involvement – we were in a fairly close knit small Vineyard church plant – I didn’t want to move far.

The only place I got into was the Claremont Graduate University, then called the Claremont Graduate School. At the time the core faculty there was Al Louch, John Vickers, and Charles Young, and D.Z. Philips for half a year. I was accepted as an M.A. student, who could then be admitted to the Ph.D. if they thought I was up to it. (As it turned out, they did.) I was at CGU for two years (1993-1995), and what I mainly did was plow through yet more early modern philosophy – Locke, Hume, Kant, and now Reid. For me, Thomas Reid was a revelation after reading Hume and Kant. I actually became very interested in the history of the so-called “Common Sense” school, and sought out and read material by thinkers as obscure as Buffier, Oswald, Beattie, and McCosh. But I found that Reid was the best philosopher among them. Around that time Keith Lehrer came out with a book on Reid, but I can say that I was into Reid just a little before it was cool. :-) I bought a reprint of his complete works which is now thoroughly marked up.

I took two rigorous seminars (Locke, Hume) with Edwin McCann of USC, who had also been doing courses at CGU. His knowledge of early modern philosophy was truly impressive, and his empiricist and Wittgensteinian leanings were an interesting counterpoint to my own zeal for traditional metaphysics.This zeal met another critic in Jill Buroker, in a seminar wholly devoted to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

D.Z. Phillips Continue reading »

Review of Thomas McCall’s Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? (Dale)

Jan 072011
 

Forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy: my review of

Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology, by Thomas McCall.

Thanks to Tom for his feedback on my first draft of this, which saved me from several errors.

This is a unique, stimulating and yet unsatisfying book which should be widely read. The answers to the questions in the title, respectively: (1) either a “social” or a constitution theory, (2) Richard Bauckham’s. McCall is a theologian well versed in analytic philosophy. This book attempts, with some success, to bridge the cultural, intellectual, and institutional divides between Christian philosophers and theologians. McCall notes that the book “will at points be less than satisfying to partisans in both camps.” (8)

In chapter 1, he nicely Continue reading »

Is God a Self? Part 5 – Varadaraja V. Raman

Oct 212010
 

(click for image credit)

V.V. Raman is an emeritus professor of Physics at the Rochester Institute of technology, and has written a number of works on science and religion, his Indian heritage, and other subjects relating to the history of science, and the relation of the sciences to the humanities. Also, he’s a poet.

Watch his interview by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn here (click the blue button) and then click here for my take -> Continue reading »

Is God a Self? Part 3 – Clayton

Aug 142010
 

Philip Clayton teaches theology and philosophy at the Claremont School of theology, and at the Claremont Graduate University.

He publishes a ton, and much of his work is in the science and religion genre. Unlike many authors in that genre, Clayton isn’t a scientist – his training is in theology, religious studies, and philosophy.

He’s also a co-founder of this Big Tent Christianity project, which aims in his words “to foster a radically different understanding of the heart of Christian faith” – different, that is, from the theologically and culturally conservative and liberal camps.

But our question is: Is God a self? What saith Clayton? Check out his interview (blue button), and then click here for my take -> Continue reading »

Is God a Self? Part 2 – Flint (Dale)

Jul 312010
 

Tom Flint is an excellent philosopher and a winsome human being. He’s teaches Philosophy at Notre Dame, and is the current editor of Faith & Philosophy – arguably the most important philosophy of religion journal.

The interviewer suggests, and Flint agrees, that it is a “strange” question whether or not God is a person. Why? They don’t say – but I would guess that people may wonder if it is being asked if God is a human person – a dude or a lady. But what’s being asked is not that, but whether or not God is a self – this is a more abstract concept, which would be satisfied by an angel, an intelligent alien, a human, a god, etc.

Watch the interview here – then click here for my take. -> Continue reading »

Is God a self? Part 1 (Dale)

Jul 252010
 

Many of you know that I’ve argued in several ways, in print, against “social” Trinity theories, and particularly the sort which holds that Father, Son, and Spirit are a group/community/quasi-family.

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.

Linkage: Discussing Fs and Gs with Brandon (Dale)

Jun 122010
 

Brandon’s Siris blog has recently completed 6 years – it has surely outlived 99.9% of blogs, and is older than trinities, which is 4 this summer! Congrats, Brandon!

In a recent post Brandon takes issue with my recent appeal to the principle that “if every F is a G then there cannot be fewer Gs than Fs”.

Some Trinity theories are inconsistent with the (I think obviously true, self-evident) principle, notably the recent theory by Mike Rea, as well as the much-quoted “Athanasian” Creed. Brandon thinks I’m confused. I am confused, about how he thinks I’m confused. And probably about other things. :-)

Check out our discussion in the comments following Brandon’s post. (Comment there if you’re interested.)

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