A quote every, yes every theology student working on the Trinity or Incarnation should memorize (Dale)

Jan 212009
 

no-bologna

Respected Catholic philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso corrects some pervasive baloney about persons which theologians are still repeating, these 22 years later! The asterisk marks his footnote – this whole passage is an aside in a very rich paper of his. Out of politeness, I omit the author of the wrongheaded passage, and I’ve added some bold highlighting to the whole thing. We’ve been over some of this before, but I think Freddoso puts it all very, very well.

…the many contemporary philosophers who accept a basically Aristotelian (as opposed to, say, Lockean or Humean) account of substance will have little difficulty with the metaphysical analysis of a person as a suppositum [ultimate subject of properties] with an intellectual nature [with essential powers of freely willing and knowing]. In fact, such philosophers are likely to be bemused by the assertion, sometimes heard issuing from the mouths of modern theologians, that the medieval notion of a person has been preempted or superceded in “modern thought”. Continue reading »

Heretical “trinitarians” – evolution of a word (Dale)

Aug 082008
 

“trinitarians”… Fer it… or agin’ it?

Following up on the previous post – the word “trinitarian” may be an adjective or a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary lists four adjective meanings: (here’s my editing of relevant parts of their entry, emphasis added)

2. Theol. Relating to the Trinity; holding the doctrine of the Trinity (opp. to Unitarian). In early use, Trinitarian heretic, one holding heretical views as to the Trinity:

1656 BLOUNT Glossogr., Trinitarian hereticks, otherwise New Arians are those that deny the blessed Trinity, and all distinction of the Divine persons.

3. Forming a trinity; consisting of or involving three in one; triple, threefold.

Part of the usage we’re complaining about is 3 Continue reading »

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 8 – Rational Reinterpretation, cont.(Dale)

Jun 302008
 
Moses Stuart (1780-1852), professor at Andover Theological Seminary,
and NOT a fan of Rational Reconstruction (image credit)


What, if anything, is wrong with with the strategy of Resolution through Rational Reinterpretation? And why are most theologians so cold towards this strategy, while most Christian philosophers love it? Consider this quote by Moses Stuart on one of Leibniz’s takes on the Trinity:

The celebrated Leibniz was requested by a Loefler, who had undertaken to refute the writings of a certain English Antitrinitarian, to give him an affirmative definition of the persons in the Godhead. He sent for answer the following: – “Several persons in an absolute substance numerically the same, signify several, particular, intelligent substances essentially related.” On farther consideration, he abandoned this, and sent a second, which was, – “Several persons, in an absolute substance numerically the same, mean relative, incommunicable modes of subsisting.”

If Leibniz actually understood this, I believe he must have been a better master of metaphysics than any person who has ever read his definition. Continue reading »

Quote: On believing what you don’t at all understand (Dale)

Jun 162008
 

“Sounds good to me!” (image credit)

Whoever says he believes what he does not at all understand, knows not what belief is, knows also not what he believes; and therefore, he believes in fact nothing, but it only seems to him [he believes]… Certainly nobody can believe something other than what he considers true… If reason is not necessary to grasp the articles of faith, then consequently it follows that the articles of faith should be presented to irrational animals… especially those which can imitate the human voice like parrots.

– Andrew Wissowatius (a.k.a. Wiszowaty), Die Vernunfftige Religion [1703 German translation of his Latin Religio Rationalis of 1685], quoted in and translated by Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, p. 270 n. 18 [slashes omitted and commas and bold added by me]

Hanson on 4th century Bible interpretation (Dale)

Jan 262008
 


“I thank thee, O Lord, that Thou hast given me the ability
to quickly read this copy of The Message, and easily discern
what it really means, unlike that jerk Flanders.”

Some interesting and disturbing comments from R.P.C. Hanson, on Bible interpretation in the era of the 4th century “Arian” controversy. This comes near the end of this magisterial book, after he’s given numerous examples of exegesis – the good, bad, and the ugly – from that era.

The last word on the appeal to the Bible during this crucial period… must be of the impression made on a student of the period that the expounders of the text of the Bible are incompetent and ill-prepared to expound it. Continue reading »

Prisonbreaking Allegorizing (Dale)

Jan 252008
 


Umm… is there any other way out?

A wise comment from the late great patristics scholar R.P.C. Hanson, in this book.

Eusebius of Emesa in one of his discourses has quite a long passage about allegorizing. He allows that it cannot altogether be rejected but he is very cautious about its use. It tends to read meanings into the text which are good in themselves but are simply not present in the text. It can be an illegitimate short cut. A man who is bound or who is in prison is anxious to be free by any means, but not all means are right. Had all ancient interpreters of the Bible followed this advice, subsequent generations would have been saved the necessity of reading a great deal of nonsense. (p. 829, emphases added)

The history of hermeneutics alone demonstrates that this is not the best possible world. :-)

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Quotes: Lewis Ayres on Pro-Nicene 3rd-4th century trinitarianism

Aug 062007
 

 


A simple being containing multiple distinct “persons” – D’oh!

Theologian Lewis Ayres is the author of this worthy book. In it, he hammers the point that the Latin vs. Social trinitarian categories aren’t helpful in understanding post-Constantinople trinitarian theology. I think he’s right about that, though I persist in using the terminology because it is helpful for 20th and 21st century theories. Ayres’s book is a wonderful piece of patristic scholarship, but it is also an extended polemic against social trinitarians. Basically, he thinks that what he aptly calls the pro-Nicene tradition has gotten short shrift in recent theological work on the Trinity, and he very helpfully presents the core of that tradition and bats down a great many mis-readings of it. Obviously, he’s sympathetic to this sort of trinity theory, to put it mildly. This will definitely come up when I discuss social theories.

Here I just wanted to pass on a striking quote, which to me spotlights a central problem that many people have with the mainstream classic Latin or Pro-Nicene tradition. Continue reading »

Quote: Stead on mysteries in theology

Jul 262007
 


“Where are my cubs?” (image credit)

I allow, indeed I declare, that the mystery of the Godhead surpasses rational apprehension; and it may be that in the end it will have to be represented by a contradiction. But it is essential that this should happen only when all our rational resources are at an end. It is ludicrous if we represent divine mysteries by avoidable contradictions, by muddles, which more disciplined thinking would enable us to dispel. And it is idolatrous if we cultivate paradox for the sake of paradox, when we could speak clearly.
. . . [ancient writers] simply observed that traditional statements about God’s ousia were full of contradictions; or rather, perhaps, they did not even observe this fact, but became accustomed to tolerate contradictions in theology, assuming that they spring necessarily from the inability of the human mind to comprehend the divine. As I have said, I myself accept the argument that if God really is God as Christians have described him, he must be beyond the reach of human apprehension. But if one believes this, then it is a pity to become nervous and try to restrict the quite proper desire for accurate thinking, for fear I suppose that God should be captured after all! No, I say! God is a fox; and he likes fox-cubs. (Christopher Stead, “The Concept of Divine Substance” in Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers (Variorum, 1985) 5,13, original emphases in italics)

Quote: A new trinitarian analogy

Jun 192007
 

Found at here at Ian’s Philosophical Orthodoxy. Thus saith Marilyn McCord Adams:

Renouncing society’s right to say who we are and what we mean, frees us for full communion with Our Creator, with that gay men’s chorus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (emphasis added)

Uhh… hmm. [speechless]

Looking at the rest of this speech, a few other things stuck out. Continue reading »

Is the doctrine of the Incarnation prior to & the source of trinitarian doctrine? – Part 2

Mar 102007
 

An interesting and much more recent statement from John Hick, along the lines of my last posting.

…Since then [around 1993] the focus of much theological discussion has moved from christology to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is partly because theology always does go the rounds of the traditional topics – creation, sin, incarnation, atone­ment, Trinity, church, heaven and hell – and after a while it feels like time to move on to something else. Why then write more about incarnation instead of engaging with the currently more fashionable idea of the Trinity? Because this doctrine presupposes and depends upon the prior doctrine of the deity (as well as humanity) of Jesus. If Jesus was God incarnate on earth, and at the same time God reigned in heaven, this already creates a binity of Father and Son. When we add the inner experience of God’s presence as Spirit, we have a trinity -the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit who, to preserve monotheism, are three in one and one in three. But there would have been no occasion for this expansion from the unitary God of Judaism to the Trinity of Christianity without the more basic belief in the deity (as well as humanity) of Jesus. For this reason the idea of Jesus as God incarnate remains basic and foundational, and without it the concept of the Trinity evaporates. If a coherent and believable theology cannot establish its earthly base in a literal, ontological incarnation, it cannot take off into the theological stratosphere of the Trinity. (Preface to the Second Edition of The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age, 2nd. ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), emphasis added.)

Continue reading »

That important doctrine… whatever it is

Feb 132007
 

I was reading an article on the Trinity by Phillip Cary, and was struck by this passage, at the start of his paper.

When I was growing up in the faith, I heard a lot about the doctrine of the Trinity, but never learned what the doctrine was. In high school and college I worshiped at faithful, Biblical churches in which pastors often affirmed the importance of the Trinity, even preached whole sermons on how important it was, yet never told us what the doctrine actually said. To find that out I had to go to graduate school and read the Church Fathers. (“The Logic of Trinitarian Doctrine (Part 1),” Religious and Theological Studies Fellowship Bulletin, Sept-Oct 1995, 2-7, emphasis added)

That was my experience growing up as well, except I don’t remember hearing the doctrine (ever!) mentioned in church – only in apologetics contexts, in the denunciation of its various dastardly deniers, such as Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses. I even managed to get through an evangelical college without really thinking about it, and part of the way through grad school.

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“trinitarian” projects in current theology

Aug 032006
 

An interesting quote from Fred Sanders‘ “Trinity Talk, Again”, Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 44:3, Fall 2005, 264-72.

…the words ‘‘Trinity’’ and ‘‘trinitarian’’ are being employed in unusual new ways in contemporary theological discourse. They sound in a different register than they once did. Your expectations are bound to be frustrated if the occurrence of the word ‘‘Trinity’’ suggests to you that the author intends to take up the task of reconciling threeness with oneness. When ‘‘trinitarian’’ occurs in titles these days, it is almost never a signal that anything about divine triunity is in view, or even anything christological or pneumatological. Instead, ‘‘trinitarian’’ is now being used in theological parlance to put the Christian edges on doctrines. It serves as a one-word cipher for the specificity of the Christian claim. At one time, the word ‘‘Christian’’ itself may have functioned this way, but calling something trinitarian now does the work the simpler term once did. Perhaps this trend is best accounted for as a sign of a diffuse postliberal ethos in contemporary theology.
…The term ‘‘trinitarian,’’ in other words, is now being used to mark out the Christian theological field of discourse as such. There are a couple of downsides to this usage. One is that many books with ‘‘Trinity’’ in the title are not books about the Trinity, which is confusing. Another is that the large number of ostensibly trinitarian theologies is really just the usual assortment of diverse theological projects, all of which now make their appeal to being trinitarian. That shows how high this doctrine’s stock has risen.

In other words, it’s now cool to flaunt your Christian credentials by slapping the word “trinitarian” on whatever you’re doing. I have to say, this strikes me as a silly practice, and as Sanders notes, it is really confusing for people searching for books or articles which are really about the doctrine(s) of the Trinity. Before I buy any such book, I go to Amazon and look really closely at the sample and table of contents.

Could this organization’s name be a similar phenomenon?

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Randal Rauser Roundly Rips “Rahner’s Rule”. Result? R.I.P. Really.

Aug 012006
 

I just read a 2005 article by Randal Rauser, a theologian at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Canada. I have to say that I was really impressed with “Rahner’s Rule: An Emperor without Clothes?” Rauser obviously knows a lot of philosophy (the whole alphabet worth? ;-) ), and he writes clearly and concisely, and with even with a touch of Plantingian humor. And to my eyes, this looks like real theological progress.

I’ve often run across theologians expounding on Karl Rahner‘s much-discussed statement that “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity, and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.” I’d scratch my head at these alleged profundities; I wasn’t clear on what was being said, or why it was supposed to be important. Rauser helpfully canvasses three (I’d count them as four) interpretations of what Rahner is asserting, and argues that none of them is both important (non-trivial & insightful) and possibily true. Here’s the quick rundown (except where noted – these are my summaries):

  1. There’s only one Trinity, not two of ‘em (i.e. two sets of three, for a total of six divine persons).
  2. [quoting Bruce Marshall] “the divine persons have the same features because they enact the economy of salvation as they would have had if there had been no economy of salvation…”
  3. God really is as the [mainstream, trinitarian] Christian tradition portrays him.
  4. It is unintelligible to wonder about a realm of reality beyond all human experience; we only have epistemic access to human history. Hence, all theorizing about God must be confined to God-in-relation-to-us.

Like a pro bowler making a strike, Rauser then knocks the whole set down. Again, in my words (except where noted), his replies to each of the four in turn:

  1. No duh! But no one has ever wanted to say that.
  2. This is contradictory, and hence, false & not even possibly true.
  3. OK, but if this is all Rahner is saying, then [Rauser says] “the Rule is simply an obtuse restatement of a Christian dogma which provides no new insight into it at all.” (p. 87) No insight here, people, move along.
  4. To the contrary, rather than misguidely attempting to solve our epistemological worries at one stroke by making such implausible declarations, we should just admit that it is possible for us to be mistaken about God’s nature.

There’s really a lot to interpretation #4 and the problems with it, and here is where Rauser really shows his philosophical aptitude. In brief, it seems that ideas like #4 are really what Rahner had in mind, as well as some theologians repeating his Rule. This fourth “antirealist” reading is, Rauser shows, the offspring of a lot of bad philosophy. I’m not going to stink up this fine summer day, though, by trying to explain this bad philosophy. See pp. 87-94 for how Rauser takes out the garbage. :-) Along the way, he actually gives a nice introduction to the whole idea of antirealism about truth. Readers interested in further, more detailed explanations of and objections to truth anti-realism should look at chapter 5 of this book, or (coincidentally) chapter 5 of this book. Some people outside philosophy are under the mistaken impression that truth antirealism has somehow been proven, or is the latest great discovery by philosophers (or scientists, or… someone). Folks should know that most analytic philosophers don’t give it the time of day. For many of us, the most interesting thing about it is: why would anyone believe something so mind-bogglingly implausible? It’s sort of the King of All Bad Theories.

In any case, Rauser convinced me that we should retire this old chesnut. The issues that theologians want to discuss when they quote Rahner, it seems, could be better discussed without his famous dark saying. May Rahner’s Rule rest in peace.

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Favorite Trinity Quotes

Jun 192006
 

Faithful readers: Please share your favorite quotes relating to the Trinity with the rest of us! They can be pro- or con-, insightful or silly. Classic, or recent. Everyone together now: Cut… Paste…

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