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

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. But you have not shewn that he is so called in opposition to the Son, or exclusive of him. It may be meant in opposition to idols only, as all antiquity has thought; or it may signify that the Father is primarily, not exclusively, the only true God, as the first Person of the blessed Trinity, the Root and Fountain of the other two.

You observe that “in these and many other places, the one God is the Person of the Father, in contradistinction to the Person of the Son.”

It is very certain, that the Person of the Father is there distinguished from the Person of the Son; because they are distincly named: and you may make what use you please of the observation against the Sabellians, who make but one Person of the two. But what other use you can be able to make of it, I see not; unless you can prove this negative proposition, that no sufficient reason can be assigned for styling the Father the only God, without supposing that the Son is excluded.

…As to 1 Cor. 8:6, all that can be reasonably gathered from it, is, that the Father is there emphatically styled one God; but without design to exclude the Son from being God also: as the Son is emphatically styled one Lord; but without design to exclude the Father from being Lord also. Reasons may be assigned for the emphasis in both cases; which are too obvious to need reciting.

…observe… that the discourse there, v. 4, 5, is about idols, and nominal gods and lords, which have no claim or title to religious worship. These the Father and Son are both equally distinguished from: which may insinuate at least to us, that the texts of the Old or New Testament, declaring the unity and excluding others, do not exclude the Son, “by whom are all things…” (Daniel Waterland, A Vindication of Christ’s Divinity: Being A Defence of Some Queries, Relating to Dr. Clarke’s Scheme of the Holy Trinity [1719]  in Van Mildert, ed. The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, Vol. I., pp. 279-80, broken into shorter paragraphs, bold added)

Next time: Is he right about this?

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7 thoughts on “Daniel Waterland on “The Father is the only God” texts – Part 1”

  1. Dale,

    Could we say that there is this important point to be made about 1Cor 8 and Ps 110. It is extraordinary the scholars have so consistently ignored the all important meaning of adoni/kurios mou when discussing how God is to be quantified.

    It is obvious that YHWH is never referred to as “my lord” [adoni]. YHWH cannot be addressed with personal possesive pronouns. On the other hand, adoni is “my lord” and therefore by definition not “my YHWH”. “My lord” is the proper protocol title for the royal Messiah.

    Bauckham and others constantly turn a blind eye to this elementary fact to adoni/kurious mou. My point is confirmed by the evident fact that Jesus is called Messiah 600 times in the NT. In fact, it is on that believe that he is the Messiah, “Son of the Living God”, that the NT is founded. It is only when 110.1 is looked at with proper attention to the meaning of the words for “lord” that we wil lresolve the present tensions on how to quantify God.

  2. Sir Anthony, thanks for stopping by!

    Yes, this is a crucial issue. In 1 Cor. 8, Paul says for us Christians there is but one God and one Lord. Readers like Bauckham know that it is impossible to tow the line that there’s no quantifying here, but only simple predication. (i.e. calling the Father “one-God” and calling Jesus “one-Lord”. No, it’s counting. But he concludes that surely something is a God if and only if it is a Lord, and vice-versa. Perhaps part of the idea here is that Paul has mentioned gods and lords in expounding his previous comment about many “so-called gods.”

    But your point is that kurios needn’t be a title for YHWH – a point which is obvious from its varied usage in the NT; sometimes it seems to mean no more than “Sir” or “Master.” But it is all the more obvious in Ps 110:1, when translated into Greek. They used kurios for both the divine name, as well as for this adoni who gets exalted – originally the king, in messianic application, Jesus. And this was for them a central text, as you point out; I think you’re right – this is part of the reason why “Lord” came to be the common way to refer to the exalted Jesus in the NT.

    I think more needs to be said about “God” and “Lord” in 1 Cor. If memory serves, Bauckham ignores something pointed out by many other commenters, namely that there was a common pagan distinction, none too clear perhaps, between “gods” and “lords.”

  3. Thanks for the interesting article about Waterland and Clarke.

    Condensing the information in 1 Cor. 8:4-6 we have “For us there is no God but the one God the Father.” That is a unitaritan statement echoed by 1300 references to God as the Father in the NT.

    Verse 6 of course says that Jesus is the one Lord MESSIAH and he is referred to as the Messiah some 600 times in the NT. The Lord Messiah was born (Lk 2.11) and nobody could imagine that God would be born. The distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Messiah is indelibly imprinted on the minds of NT Christians by Psalm 110:1, where the one Lord Yahweh addressed in an oracle the one Lord Messiah (adoni, my lord) which in all 195 occurrences never refers to Deity.

  4. Pingback: trinities - DANIEL WATERLAND ON “THE FATHER IS THE ONLY GOD” TEXTS – PART 2 (DALE)

  5. Stay tuned – more quotes coming, from his other works. I was going to move to deal with the text, but W. has a lot to say, and it is pretty hard to parse, so I’m going to post again on him next.

  6. Hi Sam – it is full except for parts I’ve cut out with the usual … usage. I don’t have it in front of me, but I assume I cut that because it was either repetitive, or was talking not about the passage but rather about Clarke. The italics are his, but the bolding is mine.

  7. Tuggy, is this the full, unedited quote? I would like to use this in a paper I am writing on this subject and want to make sure that I don’t leave anything out. Thanks.

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