How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament (Dale)

May 172012
 

Most Christians are (at least in theory, according to creeds and statements of faith promulgated by denominations) trinitarians, believers in a triune or tri-personal God, which they call the Trinity. But some have always been unitarians, believers in one God who is one perfect self, who does not in any way contain three selves or “persons.” Nowadays, these are a minority (again, going by official statements and membership rolls – I think the facts about Christians’ actual beliefs are more complicated than the official documents suggest).

In my view, before around fifth century, unitarians were always a majority. Of course, they didn’t call themselves “unitarians” – that term is of late 17th c. coinage – but arguably most of them were unitarians - for some arguments read this.

In any case, one can’t determine what is true by taking a vote. Truth may be unpopular. But also, it can be popular. So, who is right?

I propose that the following clear arguments provide a way forward. Which should we accept?

T1 The Father is not the Trinity
T2 The Trinity is God.
T3 Therefore, the Father is not God.

T1 The Father is not the Trinity.
U2 The Father is God.
U3 Therefore, The Trinity is not God.

“Is” here means numerical identity throughout. If x in this sense “is” y (in logic we write x=y) then x and y are one and the same, numerically one thing, numerically identical, and so x and y can’t ever differ in any way. The order doesn’t matter: it will be true that x=y just in case it is also true that y=x. And if it is false that x=y, then x and y are truly two – those terms name different things. To repeat: every “is” in these arguments is the “is” of identity. This is why we’re dealing with clear arguments. We’re not talking about some less close relation or association.

“God” here names Yahweh, the one true God asserted in the Hebrew scriptures.

Each argument is valid; in each case, if both premises were to be true, then the conclusion would also be true.

But we can’t consistently accept both arguments as sound. T2 conflicts with U3, and T3 conflicts with U2 (in both cases the pairs are contradictories – pairs such that one must be true and the other false).

So what to do?

Let us start on common ground. All sides should agree Continue reading »

A Lesson in Christological Rhetoric (Dale)

Apr 082012
 

You say that you want to argue for a “high” christology, for something widely considered to be a mainstream Christian understanding of Jesus. My advice is: be careful - if you say too much, you’ll open yourself up to refutation, and your claim will appear implausible, or too contentious and theoretical, or you’ll at least invite questions you have no intention of answering. How, then, to state your thesis?

“Jesus is God himself“? Sounds heretical (suggests they’re the same person, and not merely the same being, and that the Son and Father are the same person). Plus, sounds a bit too strong.

“Jesus has the divine nature“? What’s a divine nature? Who knows? Help! Is there a metaphysician in the house? You don’t want to go there – legions of nature-theories are lurking in the shadows, nipping and growling at one another, and at you.

“Jesus is a member of the Trinity“? Good and vague – but it raises that whole Trinity issue. Better to sidestep that one.

“Jesus is included in the identity of God.” Mysterious, but not in a good way. Plenty unclear, but sounds too high-falootin’, too academic – like something Brian McLaren would write. Too newly minted. You can retreat to this if need be – you can name-drop a famous scholar or two here – but whatever you do, don’t lead with it.

“Jesus is God“?

Mmm… good and vague. Powerfully simple, pithy. Close – but too much like the first statement above.

You may believe all of the above – but you don’t want to say any of those claims, unless you have to.

Here’s a better way: Continue reading »

It’s just gotta be true… (Dale)

Mar 242012
 

<gossip>Once some years ago, I was hanging out with a group of Christian philosophers, and the subject of the Trinity came up. One person,  a well known philosopher, firmly remarked that “It’s just gotta be modalism.”

I recently shared this story with a Christian philosopher friend. In response, he told me that more recently, he was hanging with a group of Christian philosophers, and one (who is at least as respected as the aforementioned – which is to say, very) opined firmly that Christians should just admit to being tritheists and defend tritheism. </gossip>

My friend and I got a big laugh out of this.

Neither philosopher, by the way, has published yet on this topic. But maybe we’re in for a bumpy ride!

The more I think about this, though, the less funny I think it is. There’s nothing new under the sun, says my darker self. And I recall the words of the dearly departed Christian philosopher William Alston,

It is a well known fact, amply borne out by the history of the discussion of the topic, that as soon as one goes beyond the automatic recital of traditional creedal phrases one inevitably leans either in the direction of modalism – the “persons” are simply the different aspects of the divine being and/or activity – or tritheism – there are really three Gods, albeit very intimately connected in some way. (“Swinburne and Christian Theology,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 41 (1997) , p. 54).

Well, if that’s so, maybe there’s a problem with those traditional creedal phrases! (For his part, Alston rested with a very unsatisfying appeal to mystery.)

I tremendously respect all three of these people – Alston and the two nameless ones – but I dare say that none of the three has fully enough explored all the options.

Craig, White, and Cerberus (Dale)

Mar 182012
 

First, I suggest we stick with “SER-ber-us” because pronouncing it “Ker-ber-us” fills some people’s  heads with images like these. And we can all agree, that is not a good thing. :-)

Last time, I mentioned Bill Craig’s recent public assertion of his Cerberus analogy for the Trinity. Here’s a remix by an Islamic apologist, with snickering commentary by Reformed Christian apologist James White.

I take it White is not a “social” theorist like Craig, but rather a negative mysterian (refusing to assign much intelligible content to the doctrine) – like those Dallas Theological Seminary folks. In that video linked above, he just asserts that Craig doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

This (that he’s a negative mysterian) in confirmed by this follow up video.  (Or at his blog.) In the name of just sticking with what the Bible says, he just Continue reading »

A Few Thoughts on Sudduth’s Open Letter (Dale)

Feb 022012
 

A few thoughts on re-reading Sudduth’s open letter explaining his conversion.

Saith Sudduth,

Krishna is the all-attractive Absolute who is manifested in the different religious traditions of the world. There is merging into impersonal Brahman. There are also distinctly theistic experiences in which the self encounters a personal God.

The ultimate being is either personal or not. Thus, it can’t be that both the aforementioned experiences are veridical, i.e. represent God as God really is.

I think Sudduth agrees; he goes on to explain that “merging” experiences are something like the devotee coming in contract with what some would call the “energies” of God. Of course, Indian philosophers like Sankara would disagree. And I don’t know why we should accept Sudduth’s claim that:

…that transcendental consciousness (the aim of nearly all religious traditions) is in fact variegated in nature.

I don’t know that there is any one general sort of experience which nearly all traditions aim at. Experiences of a loving god are not at all like the sorts of experiences monistic types profess, wherein, they say, Continue reading »

Merry Christmas (Dale)

Dec 252011
 

Pictured here is Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone (a.k.a. St. Francis of Assisi, d. 1226 ) – my photo of a 19th c. statue from southern Arizona, probably well worn from processions and general fondling. I understand that he started, or at least popularized the building of manger scenes.

I remember reading his early biographies some years ago. I never could decide what to think: whether he was extremely holy, mentally ill, or both. Once a well known Christian philosopher who works in medieval philosophy described St. Francis to me as “a stinker” – I think the meaning was a sort of drama queen or manipulator. So that’s another option. ;-) But I remain perplexed.

Went to a Christmas eve service tonight. At one point the pastor said that the incarnation – that God became a human being – makes no sense to us, yet at some level we – i.e. all we Christians – believe it. If I were less tired, or in a different mood, this would induce a whole series of rants/lectures from me. But, not tonight. I will just say: I am grateful that God sent us his only Son, the perfect representation of him and sure way to him.

After the jump: another pic taken at the same place as the Francis pic. This time, someone indisputably both holy and sane, also celebrated Catholic-style. Merry Christmas! Continue reading »

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 »

Comment on a Poll – an inconsistent triad (Dale)

Aug 192011
 

The poll below is an interesting one. (The bogus one to the left is only fun, but not interesting.) As I write this post, it is still current, and is available for voting at the upper right of the main blog page.

Which of these is false?

  1. The Christian God is a self.
  2. The Christian God is the Trinity.
  3. The Trinity is not a self.

One option is to vote that none are false, since all are true. As I write this, 27% have picked this option. But this is a poor pick. This “is” here is the “is” of numerical identity throughout. Given this, it is impossible that all three be true; they are demonstrably inconsistent. (The logical form is: 1. g=s, 2. g=t, 3. -(t=s).)  At least one must be false.

  • If 1 & 2, then not-3. If this God is a self, and is the Trinity, and it must be false that the Trinity is not a self.
  • If 1 & 3 then not-2. If God’s a self, and the Trinity isn’t, then it must be false that God just is the Trinity.
  • If 2 & 3 then not-1. If God’s the Trinity, but is not a self, then it is false that the Christian God is a self.

Why then do 27% opt for inconsistency (affirming all three)? Continue reading »

A few thoughts on generation and time (Dale)

Aug 172011
 
A reader emailed to ask me what I thought about the classic patristic doctrine of “eternal begetting.”
When this reader objected to someone that any process of begetting  must be temporal, with a before and an after, he was told that this was an illicit use of “finite logic.”
A few thoughts in response:
  • People who talk of “finite logic” generally don’t know what a logic is. I think what they mean to say is rather something about our finite, human intellectual powers, e.g. to think, believe, know, understand.
  • Of course, we can only use the powers we have! Continue reading »

Linkage: Did God the Son change in becoming incarnate? (Dale)

Aug 152011
 

“Classic” (i.e. mainstream catholic, Platonic) Christian theism holds that God is timeless, and so incapable of any change whatever.

And they add: the Word is God, and the Word became flesh.

Sounds like a change, doesn’t it? First, the Word is simply divine, and a moment later, he’s entered into a “hypostatic union” with a “complete human nature.”

Reformed philosophical theologian James Anderson takes a crack at this one. (HT: Triablogue.) I much like his set-up. I’m less keen on the solution. Short answer: it’s a mystery (apparent contradiction). You’ll have to read his post to see why I chose this pic.

A few quick comments: first, I’m with Continue reading »

GOD THE BABY – RAMA / RAM, AVATAR OF VISHNU – Reloaded (DALE)

Jul 312011
 

VishnuCould a god have been a baby?

It depends on what it takes to be a real god…

Hindus who believe in avatars, and catholic Christians say: yes, this is possible, for it has been actual.

In Hinduism, this is particularly emphasized in Vaishnavite traditions, in Christianity, Roman Catholicism.

They of course differ about which god this was.

For other Christians, the answer is no.

In a previous post, I commented that there is something pleasing about the idea that a mighty god stooped to become a small, weak baby.

This time: story of Vishnu incarnate has been updated.

My edit, with comments, after the break. Continue reading »

God the baby – Rama / Ram, avatar of Vishnu (Dale)

Jul 252011
 

(click for image credit)

Last Christmas season I posted in a slightly Grinch-like way about catholic Incarnation theories, and about some Christians’ lack of critical thinking about them.

There’s an interesting human impulse observable here. The best analogy I can think of right now is posters like the one to the left. The ladies love them.

Why? There’s the sex appeal of the dude. And the cute baby. Everyone likes a cute baby.

But there’s something else, something affecting about a big, strong, tough manly man, stooping to gently cradle a teeny, vulnerable baby. He’s made himself so vulnerable. Of course, that adds to the “sexy” part. My point is, the affecting nature of the man’s condescension is a distinct element of the appeal.

Now imagine that God, big strong God, becomes an ignorant, weak, dependent little baby. There’s a similar, recognisable emotional tug there. What an amazing idea! Of course, it may be amazing in part because it’s contradictory. But I’ll not argue that here.

Instead, a bit of cross-cultural comparison. Christians aren’t the only ones who go in for the idea of a god who comes down from his mighty position, to be a cute, puny little baby.

The Ramayana is an epic poem, and a sort of scripture in Hinduism. Parts of it go back perhaps to the 400s BCE, though it comes in many versions, some of which are from the high middle ages. The clip below is from a wildly popular Indian television series from 1986 called Ramayan. If you’re interested in Hinduism, I recommend it, but it’s a real time commitment to watch the whole thing. I’ve edited some bits of  it, to include the more theological parts, and to get it down to youtube length. It’s here, Ram or Rama, is supposed to be an avatar of the god Vishnu.

My point is not 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 »

Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Theologian and Philosopher (Dale)

Jun 152011
 

A while back I posted on a short, popular piece by Biola theologian Fred Sanders. He’s now responded. I’m going to continue the conversation, I hope shedding light on the differing assumptions and methods of present-day academic theologians and philosophers. I agree with Fred that responses-to-responses are usually boring. Here’s a greater crime: a (long) response to a response to a response. :-P

I guess what set me in motion was his claim, which struck me as unreasonable, that it’s a good thing that there’s no “Trinity verse” in the Bible – i.e. one which explicitly and clearly  states the doctrine.

In fact, up until I think some time in the late 19th c., trinitarians thought they had something pretty close: Continue reading »

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 »

Quote: Orwell on Positive Mysteries (Dale)

May 232011
 

A lesson in epistemic humility from a great master of 20th century literature:

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

(George Orwell, 1984)

Winston here doesn’t get it. It seems to him that 2 + 2 = 4 – always! And always, because it is necessarily so; it seems to Winston impossible that adding two to two not result in four. He can see that it is with his eyes, and “see” that it must be with his mind. Or, so he thinks.

O’Brien explains that the Magisterium of the Party is to be trusted above one’s own intuitions. If they say it is three, then it is three. And should that say it is five, it would be five. If they say it is 3 and 4 and 5 – then so be it. Sanity involves trusting their judgements over your own; theirs trump yours. You must know your place, citizen. Only an extreme individualist would disagree.

Is it an apparent contradiction (aka positive mystery)? Sure. Winston seems to think this is somehow a problem.

But is it any surprise that the collective wisdom of The Party should surpass that of a puny, recently born creature like yourself? After all, the Party consists of humans like you, many of them smarter than you. Surely it is sheer arrogance to think you’ve magically become wiser than the Party – the Mother who birthed you, provided for all your needs, and taught you everything you know. Honestly, what is the chance of that? We should expect that some things she tells us do no make sense to us. Thus, that the Party asserts apparent contradictions is evidence that she speaks only truth.

Poor Winston – he thinks he’s sane. But, that’s how a lot of insane people think of themselves.

Winston might try to argue that he really loves the Party, and would like to reform it for the better. Insanely, he doesn’t realize that the Party is just as it should (now) be. Big Brother has seen to it, and we all trust him – at least, those of us who are sane. If he wants to change the Party, he will, and it will be the right change at the right time. Winston is a citizen, and the place of a citizen is to serve and obey the Party, which requires trusting her judgements, which are of course His judgements as well. Winston keeps forgetting that. Thank Big Brother that we have O’Briens to gently remind us.

Below the fold, a bit more therapy: Continue reading »

“One in Being” Out, “Consubstantial” (back) In (Dale)

Apr 132011
 

The most controversial word up to that date in Christian theology was the Greek homoousios, enshrined at the Nicea council called and presided over by the first  Christian (?) Roman emperor, Constantine, in the year 325.

This council said that we must confess that the Son is homoousion with the Father.
What did it mean? Same ousia. Does that clear it up?

OK, here’s more: same being-or-substance-or-essence-or-nature-or-something!

Whatever it was supposed to mean the “Arians” didn’t like it, and at the time, that was good enough. It was supposed to imply that Son, like Father, was “true God”, of divine status – however, unlike the Father, from true God.

Some were concerned in the immediate aftermath that the new formula was somehow modalistic (“Sabellian”). Aside from that fact the the word was first used by a modalist in the 3rd century, you can see why. If ousia is taken to mean individual entity, then it can be read as asserting Father and Son to be numerically identical – so that anything true of one has to be true of the other. However, it’s far from clear that at the time most took it that way.

When they translated the Nicene creed into Latin, homoousion became consubstantialem. In older English translations of the Catholic missal, this was “consubstantial“. But in the post-Vatican II era, there was an urge to clean up, modernize,  and clarify liturgical language. Thus, since 1970 they’ve been saying (in English language masses) “one in Being with the Father”.

Some criticize this for suggesting modalism. (Nothing new under the sun, people!) In any case, this translation is on its way out.

For some time, they’ve been fighting over how traditional liturgical language should be. For the obsessive, here’s a whole blog devoted to the missal-update.

The new version will go back to Continue reading »

Warning to New Christians (Dale)

Apr 072011
 

Over at Parchment and Pen Michael Patton has posted a chapter on the Trinty, part of a forthcoming book called The Discipleship Book, intended to instruct new Christians.

Dear new Christians – beware. Patton is sincere, but misinformed. He thinks the Bible obviously teaches what he’s asserting, and reasons that any prior Bible-loving Christians must’ve thought likewise.

But having studied a vast amount of historical writings by Christians, I can assure you that this is demonstrably not so, even if we stick to “mainstream” Christians (so ignoring, e.g. “Arians”, Marcionites, etc.) I take no pleasure in pointing this out, and I wish it were as simple as Patton says. But facts are facts.

I’ve discussed his sort of take on the Trinty before. It is not, as Patton says in a comment, “what the Bible teaches and Christians for 2000 years have believed.” It is what (some? many?) theologians at Dallas Theological Seminary think about the Trinity. How widespread these views are, I’m not sure. But the many evangelical and other theologians riding the “social trinitarian” bandwagon would not agree with what Patton says.

Regarding what Patton holds forth as “the best we can do”, take care lest you fall into inconsistency.

You should know that some of the most brilliant Christian thinkers in the last 100 years have held many different views on just how “the” doctrine should be understood. Unfortunately, these theories are, for the most part, not consistent with one another.

Patton asserts that Continue reading »

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