From time to time, I’m going to set up some simple polls for ya’ll to vote in. I’ve decided to set them up outside of WordPress (this blog’s software), so as to avoid various complications. Here’s praying that I don’t run into technical difficulties that are over my head!
I’ve shamelessly stolen the four claims – the inconsistent tetrad – from a posting by Jeff Russell, who has had a very clear and thoughtful discussion of the Trinity here, here, and here. I hope he considers my theft a compliment! 🙂
Please click here to vote in or see the results of the first poll.
After voting, at your option you can click “comment on this poll” to return to this posting and comment – just scroll down to “Post a Comment”. As always, if you haven’t commented before, I’ll have to approve your comment before it appears.
You can only vote once – the IP address of your computer is recorded, and no one else using your computer will be able to vote. For now, there’s no time limit on the polls.
Have fun!
JohnO,
Thanks for your comment. I take it that you’re denying 1 in the set of claims. Thus, not only God is worship-worthy, but also Jesus.
How would you square that with what many readers see as the OT teaching that only Yahweh is to be worshipped, e.g. in the 10 commandments.
Hi Dale,
This has been an interesting discussion. My basic point is just that most people have a commitment to Chalcedon, or even if not are influenced by its way of stating things, so it seems reasonable that most people are inclined to read the tetrad in something like the consistent way. You’re right, of course, that it is possible that they were reading it (and especially (2)) in other ways.
Even if we take ‘God’ to be the Father or the Trinity, though, I don’t see how the problem arises. If we take ‘God’ in (2) to be intersubstitutable with ‘the Father’, then it seems to me that to get the inconsistency we’d have to read (1) as a claim that only the Father is worshipworthy. (Because otherwise ‘God’ would mean something different in (1) and (2), and no inconsistency can be drawn from an equivocation.) If we read ‘God’ as ‘the Trinity’, then it has to be taken either collectively (the Trinity all together) or distributively (over each member of the Trinity). The latter would get us the inconsistency, perhaps, but it would imply (among other things) that the Son is not human, which is a denial of the Incarnation. If the former, which I hadn’t thought of before, almost everyone would take it as true, but then it seems that to get an inconsistency we’d have to read (1) as applying to the Trinity all together, in which case we’d be denying (among other things) that members of the Trinity are worshipworthy considered by themselves (because the only thing that would be worshipworthy would be the Trinity taken all together), which seems very odd. Over all the possibilities that we’ve looked at, it does seem that we only get an inconsistency if we read (2) in such a way that it commits us to the denial of the Incarnation, or read (1) in a peculiar way that I think people would have been unlikely to think of off the top of their heads.
You’re point about reduplication is an interesting one. You’re right that reduplicative strategies are authentically Chalcedonian (both of the major documents of Chalcedon, the Definition and the Tome of Leo, use reduplicative statements), so it is indeed possible for a Chalcedonian to take (2) reduplicatively. But, as you say, it would require seeing (2) as an equivocal claim (‘God is not human [considered as incarnate]’ being a very different claim from ‘God is not human [considered simply as God]’). I think this would have been awkward in the context of a poll asking which claim was false. On the latter sort of interpretation [the claim taken to refer to God qua God], there wouldn’t be any inconsistency, because it would just require us to conclude that Jesus is God. On the former sort of interpretation [the claim taken to refer to God qua incarnate], (2) would be self-contradictory. So it’s still ‘None False’ or ‘(2) False’, depending on how (2) is interpreted.
Jesus is worship-worthy ONLY as the KING. He cannot be worshipped as God (He himself worshipped God).
Normally people use as a metaphor for Jesus the situation of Joseph/Pharoah. Joseph was not worshipped as Pharoah. Just like Jesus was not worshipped as God.
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Hey Brandon,
My friend, if instead of (2), I said “God is not contingent” or “God is not corruptible” you’d never take me to be asserting that divinity isn’t contingency, or that divinity isn’t corruptibility. Something is rather being denied of God – the entity. I suggest that it’s only your committment to the Chalcedonian (or maybe post-Calcedonian) theory which pushes you to read (2) as being an assertion about properties. Mind you, I’m not asserting that Chalecedon’s folmulae are true, or that they’re false. I’m just saying, I don’t see how they help here. I’m agnostic about your claim that committment to the theory explains why 50% said all of 1-4 are true.
The inconsistency, though, is obvious. By 0 & 2, there’s one non-human God. By 3 & 5, there’s one human Jesus. By 4, Jesus is worship-worthy. By 1, he’s numerically identical to God. By Leibniz’s Law, then, God IS human. Doh! Asserting and denying the same thing.
Why doesn’t (2) obviously deny the Incarnation? Because many readers will take it (influenced by theology) to refer to the whole Trinity, or (influenced by NT usage) to refer to the Father – neither of which are supposed to have been incarnated. You, if I understand you, took (2) to be referring to the individual essence of God – the non-universal, token of divinity that is common to all three. That thing IS supposed to have been incarnated, so on that reading, (2) would be inconsistent with the traditional Incarnation doctrine. The doctrine of divine simplicity says that God “is the same as” any of his attributes, so that muddies the waters, making one not see any difference between talking about a thing, and talking about that thing’s individial essence.
It occurred to me that the usual Chalcedonian response would be not what you’ve said, but rather something like this: “2 is false. God IS human. And he isn’t. But, you see, there’s no contradiction. He’s human qua incarnated, but not human qua divine.” Or maybe, “He’s human qua Son, but not human qua Father.”
Isn’t this qua-dodge the move that is usually made? It too has quite a history, but one can make the case that it is just papering over inconsistencies.
In any case, you’re entirely right that the Chalcedonian two-natures theory deserves a full hearing in the context of philosophizing about the Christian God. As does the qua- strategy. Indeed, there’s been interesting work on both in recent years, and I believe some palpable progress has been made – hope to post in the future on some of it, as it seems to have made no impact at all on either academic theology or popular Christian thinking.
Dale,
I agree that the proper names issue is not front-and-center; my primary point in bringing it up was just that it doesn’t seem to me to matter much whether we treat ‘God’ as a proper name or as a common name. But setting that aside, I’m not sure I follow your claim about 0-5. The basic structure is, I take it:
(0) There is at least one, and no more than one, God.
(1) Only God is worshipworthy.
(2) God is not human.
(3) Jesus is human.
(4) Jesus is worshipworthy.
(5) There is at least one, and no more than one, Jesus.
I don’t see where the inconsistency is supposed to arise. (1), (3), and (4) still yield, “Jesus is both God and human,” all (0) and (5) add to this is that there is one Jesus who is both the one God and human, and (2), read as I have suggested (on reading it otherwise, see below), just indicates that his being the one God is not his being human. That doesn’t actually change anything. Compare:
(0) There is at least one, and no more than one, mayor of this city.
(1) Only the mayor can give the key to the city.
(2) Being mayor is not being a father.
(3) Dave is a father.
(4) Dave can give the key to the city.
(5) There is at least one, and no more than one, Dave.
All this shows is that Dave is the mayor as well as a father, i.e., ‘Dave is a mayor’ and ‘Dave is a father’ are both true. So there still is no logical problem when your original (2) is interpreted as I’ve suggested it usually would be interpreted. So, again, it all comes down to how (2) is interpreted.
With regard to (2), I suppose I’m just confused about what you regard as the original problem. The claims in your poll are not developed or given much context (it would be hard to build a poll in which they were); and the puzzle created by it, I thought, was why people were picking the option that was, apparently, obviously inconsistent. And my point was that it isn’t obviously inconsistent if you read (2) in a way in which it traditionally has been read in this context. I don’t think there’s any changing the subject here, because there’s not enough information in the poll itself to lead most people to recognize that you are intending for (2) not to be taken in way it usually is in this context (namely, where we are talking about Jesus, worshipworthiness, God, humanity). Also, it seems to me that reading (2) in the way I suggest makes sense of the poll results in a way that you can’t; namely, it gives a reason why most people taking the poll would choose “None False,” but does so without attributing irrationality to them. This is why I suggested you may have underestimated the ambiguity of (2).
On the relation between (2) and the Incarnation, I don’t understand your argument that (2) interpreted in your way doesn’t imply that there is no Incarnation, since it treats God as a logical subject and denies that humanity can be predicated of it. Since the Incarnation is generally understood to be at least minimally that God became man (some way, somehow), why wouldn’t we consider this to be just a denial of the Incarnation? Further, if God is not human in the sense you’ve given then it would seem to follow that nothing human is God (and this has to be so if the tetrad is to generate any inconsistency).
Further, I’m not sure why the Chalcedonian reading has to bring anything ‘fresh’ to the table, since I brought it up largely to point out why I think most people wouldn’t have read (1)-(4) as inconsistent. Indeed, I’m not sure why one couldn’t say the reverse: that your (1)-(4), and the fact that people tend to take them as not inconsistent, doesn’t bring any fresh puzzle to the table, but simply raises again issues that were already discussed at great length over the course of the first six Ecumenical Councils, including Chalcedon. (Not that it’s a bad thing if it’s not fresh in that way.) Whether or not the Chalcedonian account is based on a puzzling metaphysical speculation, it’s a very common account — indeed, for vast swathes of Christians (Orthodox, Catholic, and Calvinist, especially, although not exclusively) it is the authoritative account. So I don’t think it can be ignored in this context.
Hi Brandon,
Thanks much for your thoughtful reply, and for your patience. I’m (actually we’re) lucky to have your comments. Readers: he adds some more points at his thoughtful blog Siris.
I went and read the Burge paper, and I’m not really convinced. I’m more sympathetic to the view he mention in his second to last paragraph. In any case, I don’t think that the philosophy of language debate about how names work really matters to our concerns here, as I’ll explain.
Note to non-philosophers: What is going on here, is that Brandon is employing an important philosophical technique for showing that a set of claims really is consistent. He’s analyzing their structure, getting beneath the English, to the struction of what is actually being asserted. And he’s saying that the appearance of contradiction goes away once this underlying structure is revealed. What I’m about to do, boils down to this: “OK – let’s grant that you’re right about some of that structure. Look – the inconsistency is still there.” This may look like useless noodling, but it really isn’t – sometimes this technique that Brandon is employing works beautifully!
Back to the allegedly inconsistent tetrad:
1. Only God (the LORD) is worship-worthy.
– You read this as: For anything, if it is God (a God) then it is worship worthy. Fine.
– You also assume, I take it, that there’s only one God. So add claim #0 to the set:
0. There’s only one God. (The predicate “God” is properly applicable to just one thing/entity.)
2. God is not human.
– You want to read this as: “Divinity isn’t humanity.” Sorry – that’s just changing the subject! 2 is about God, not about one property’s relation to another. Moreover, it’s trivially true.
– You said that 2 was a straight up denial of the Incarnation. Maybe you read it is: Nothing is both divine and human. But again, you’ve changed the subject. The sentence isn’t about humanity and divinity, asserting that nothing instantiates both. It’s about God – denying that he’s human.
– Moreover, don’t you want to say that 2 is *true* if “God” refers to the Father, or to the Trinity?
3. Jesus is human.
4. Jesus is worship-worthy.
– in 3 & 4, let’s grant that your analysis is correct. Still, you assume that there’s exactly one thing which satisfies the predicates: Jesus, human, and worshipworthy.
– So let’s add to the set
5. There’s only one thing which is: Jesus, human, and worship-worthy.
So, if you don’t think 1-4 are in fact consistent, it doesn’t matter. For you’re dealing with not merely 1-4, but the larger set 0-5. And those are demonstrably inconsistent.
0-5 assert that there’s one worshipworthy thing, and it both is and isn’t human. This is the same problem we started with, when analyzing 1-4 in the way that Jeff and I were insisting. But the techinical dispute about how names work is a red herring, once we include two more relevant background assumptions, which I assume you don’t want to deny.
The Chalcedonian response, I believe, amounts to nothing more than the puzzling assertion that a single thing can have two natures, hence, Jesus can be both human (relative to his human nature) and not human (relative to his divine nature). Moreover, Jesus, the Father, and the whole Trinity share numerically one divine nature, hence, in a sense the Father and the Trinity are human two – in that their divinity (“Godhead”) is in fact united to an individual human nature, although in their case, not in a way so as to constitute a “hypostatic union”. If I’m understanding this rightly, the Chalcedonian response isn’t based on any fresh analysis, any new insight into the structure of my original 1-4. Rather, it’s based on a metaphysical speculation (that a thing can have two different natures, ones not related as genus & species, like mammal and human) – and one that, as my English friends say – looks at first glance to be rather “dodgy”.
Hi, Dale & Jeff,
The translation issues largely have to do with proper names as such. This nice paper by Tyler Burge gives a few of the reasons why proper names in general can’t be treated as individual constants (they can be used predicatively, they pluralize, they take quantity, they appear to have content, none of which should be possible if they were individual constants or if they were adequately translated by individual constants). There are other reasons, too, that Burge does not discuss. It’s possible that there are very rare artificial uses of proper names in which they do function as individual constants, but even this isn’t clear. At the very least it shows that we should be careful not to assume that the best translation of a proper name is an individual constant; this might not make any more sense than trying to translate “Dogs are smart” as Sd.
That being God is not being human may be obvious for some, but many people tend to interpret a number of major Christological heresies (Monophysitism in particular) as being committed to its denial — it’s why the Chalcedonian Definition is so adamant that the natures are ‘without confusion’ and that their distinction is not annulled by the union. (But I confess freely that my suggestion may not be an adequate translation of what people have in mind, either. In particular, I’m not sure if what is being rejected should be treated as an identity. What’s really at issue is a sort of overlap, i.e., whether there can be some x such that x is G and x is H and x’s being G just is its being H, and vice versa, even if G and H are not related to each other in this way for every case. Nonidentity seems too weak to express this precisely, but I’m at a loss for a better way of doing it. If anyone has a better idea of how to express this, let me know.) Whether or not denial of this is really what Monophysites (or particular Lutheran theologians, who are also sometimes accused of it by Calvinists) are committed to, if they are believed to be committed to it, that’s reason enough to say it explicitly, given how common Monophysitisms have been.
So my (rough) gesture toward a better translation of (1)-(4):
(1) Only what is G is worshipworthy.
(2) In no case is being God being human.
(3) Jesus is human.
(4) Jesus is worshipworthy.
or
(1) (x)(if Wx, Gx)
(2) ~(G=H) [subject to revision, as noted in the caveat above]
(3) (x)(if Jx, Hx)
(4) (x)(if Jx, Wx)
And my suggestion, which I think fairly standard, is that this is not inconsistent. It just implies (if Jx, (Hx & Gx)), i.e., that Jesus is both God and human, understood in such a way that his being God and his being human cannot be conflated in any way. The basic conclusion follows directly from (1), (3), and (4); (2) simply adds the Chalcedonian qualifier that the natures (H and G) are not to be confused in saying (Hx & Gx).
I don’t see that any identity problem arises with such a suggestion; after all, the claim is not that Jesus is identical with being God, i.e., that Jesus is the property of Godhood. And that’s what would be required to run afoul of (2). So I don’t think that this is an issue.
Hey guys,
Brandon, I’m not sure about some of your technical points. I do think it is wierd to translate “Brandon is smart.” into a conditional with a universal quantifier, instead of just Sb.
In any case, re: your main point – can you please restate the original 1-4 in the consistent form you have in mind? If you do that, then I think I’ll fully get your point.
Jeff has a good point – Jesus & God can’t be identical, as some things are true of one that are not true of the other. Were you saying that the Chalcedonian incarnation theory requires that? It requires that the divine nature be united to a complete individual human nature, with the result of one being with two natures. If having as one’s nature the (individual, not universal) divine nature implies being identical to God, then it looks like Chalcedon is on a collision course with Leibniz’s Law… I need to think more about the issue though, as I read some of the hypersophisticated attempts to make sense of this two-natures claim.
I hope I’m following well enough to say something cogent.
1. “God is not human”. If I read you right, Brandon, you want to interpret this as “~(G=H)”, where G and H are something like predicates of divinity and humanity. If I wanted to say that, I don’t think saying “God is not human” would be a very clear way to do it. But I’m not even sure why I would want to say that in the first place–I mean, we all agree that some humans aren’t God, so clearly humanity is not divinity. But whether God is human is a different sort of question.
2. Dale’s reading is the one I personally had in mind: that is, there is a particular individual called “God”, or “g” for short, and ~Hg. You make a good point, though, that ~Hg entails (x)(Hx–>~(x=g)), “No human is (identically) God”–which does sound a lot like a denial of the incarnation.
To that, I say we get to that same place by many roads–which is what steps 3-5 of Dale’s argument against son-modalism show. If we believe that part of his argument, and we believe in the incarnation, then we have to say that the incarnation does not entail that any human being just is God.
3. I’m not sure I follow the thrust of this business about not translating names as logical constants. Do you mean to say that the name “God” doesn’t pick out a single individual? Or that I shouldn’t use a logical constant to index that individual? Could be I’ve lost information in that translation, sure, but have I added anything that didn’t come with the proper name?
I don’t think the debate over social trinitarianism is relevant to the four propositions, in part because you can be a Chalcedonian with or without being a social trinitarian. The real question in this context is how (2) would naturally tend to be interpreted by most people. While ‘God’ and ‘the LORD’ may be names, I don’t see how this would affect the matter. If you say, “Brandon is smart,” one translation of this, I would think, is that for any x, if x is Brandon, x is smart; all you need to handle this is to allow that we can predicate the singular term ‘Brandon’ of a logical subject, which we can (if x is the one uniquely described in context as ‘Brandon’, x is smart). So (if Bx, Sx). That the B in question has an extension of one doesn’t matter. And as far as I can see, this does everything that needs to be done, unless we’re doing something else that requires identity between variables (which we aren’t, since ‘g’ would be a constant). I don’t deny that in ordinary language we would treat a proper name as a subject in a case like ‘Brandon is smart’, but ordinary language functions like a term logic, not like the predicate calculus. When we translate into the latter, we have to make sure that the translation preserves what the proper names are doing in ordinary language, and I don’t think treating them as logical constants does.
So it’s natural, as you say, to interpret “Only God is worshipworthy” as “There’s only one worshipworthy being, and it is God,” accepting that if there are any worshipworthy beings there is only one; but the natural translation of ‘it is God’, it seems to me, is still Gx, not x=g, taking G as a singular term. One of several reasons this makes more sense to me is that logical constants carry no content, since they simply index individuals, but names like ‘God’ and ‘the LORD’ do, even taken as proper names. So we shouldn’t go translating a proper name as a logical constant without good reason. In any case, (2) shows itself as ambiguous; it can be interpreted the way you interpret it, or it can be interpreted as a higher-order comment about things that can be said of other things. Since Chalcedonians (and many others) do usually mean it that way in this context, that’s how they would usually be inclined to interpret it.
But all this is primarily a matter of how the original premises should be interpreted, and gets into complicated issues about how to handle proper names that don’t need to be examined here. My primary point, which I think stands even if I’m wrong about names in general, is just that the sentences can be interpreted in a non-arbitrary (and, in fact, very traditional) way that doesn’t make them an inconsistent set. If we take your interpretation, then, as I said before, (2) becomes a very controversial thesis (which it doesn’t appear to be in natural language form), because it (unlike the natural language version) is clearly a denial of the Incarnation, requiring us to say that anything that is human is not also God. (This is at least one reason why I think people don’t usually interpret ‘God is not human’ the way you do; it’s not very useful for people who believe in the Incarnation to do that, given that there is a way to interpret it that doesn’t involve denying the Incarnation.) And so on that interpretation, I think most of the people who said, “None False” would change their answer to “(2) False”.
Hi Brandon,
I’m guessing that you’re trying to take the issue in a social trinitarian direction. In this context, that’s a hard sell. Proposition #1 was “Only God (the LORD) is worship-worthy.” Pretty clearly, “God” and “the LORD” are names here. Thus, people naturally think of it as my analysis above – as saying that there’s only one worship-worthy being, and God is it. If I say “Brandon is smart”, then no one will understand me to be saying that whatever things have… Brandoninity 😉 are also things which have smartness. “g” in my analysis isn’t a variable or predicate, it is a name, which simply refers to an entity.
Your last sentence indeed makes sense, but if “God” there is a name, or if it picks out the property of being identical to God, then it’s equivalent to mine. If “is God” really means “is divine” (is a god), then I think it is analytically true, and thus plenty defensible, if not too informative.
I would think that a social trinitarian would need to deny 1. (Incidentally, as I write this, about 12% took that route. Not that we can determine the truth of the matter by taking a vote!)
Hi, Dale,
I’m not sure I follow the reasoning behind your translation, “For any x, Wx only if x=g”. All that is required is that ‘God’ be predicable of x. So it would be better to say, “For any x, Wx only if Gx.” The rest would be “G is not H”; “Hj”; and “Wj”. And that’s not inconsistent because “Gj” and “Hj” can both be true, even though G and H are not the same. And this is true whether you take G and H to be ‘divinity’ and ‘humanity’ or ‘God’ and ‘man’.
So while I think I see your point about substances and properties, but I don’t think it causes any problems here; substance can be the predicate term of a proposition as much as anything else can, and to that extent, someone’s being this or that substance is a property, if we take properties to be what’s identified by descriptions that are predicable of subjects. And “Only what is God (the LORD) is worshipworthy” seems a more natural translation than “Only what is identical to g is worshipworthy,” where g is a variable just thrown in there without explanation. Translating the latter way, we need additional premises that specify what sorts of properties a g can have, in order to give it the same sort of content that it has in ordinary speaking (what the translation says in ordinary language is, “take anything in the universe of discourse; this is worshipworthy only if this is that” — not very informative without further information about what properties ‘that’ has); whereas in the former way, we are simply saying that an x that is worshipworthy is an x that is God, and that makes straightforward sense.
Brandon,
Thanks for the comment.
I can believe that I am underestimating some ambiguities, but… I don’t think your analysis represents your suggested interpretation. You’ve got “g” and “h” being names of substances and also properties. Wouldn’t the analysis be this? (I’ll switich to the form Fo for the assertion that object o has property F, or satisfies predicate F.)
For any x, Wx only if x=g.
d is not h (d is now a name for divinity, and h is a name for humanity)
Hj
Wj
This is no longer an inconsistent tetrad, though it still has the objectional implication that g=j (not merely Dj – Jesus is divine).
Maybe I’m just not getting something – please be patient and help me out. I thought it was clear that people would read 2 as -Hg.
Dale,
I think you underestimate the ambiguity of (2). The natural Chalcedonian reading — in the sense that it’s the way people who accept Chalcedon would often tend to use it in this context — is “Being God is not being human”; i.e., ‘God’ and ‘human’ are read as properties (or natures).
Thus your tetrad has this form:
Only g is w
g is not h
J is h
J is w
Which can only be an inconsistent set (unsurprisingly) if J is not also God. It’s like saying only the mayor gets to use the mayor’s office; being a mayor is not being a father; John is a father; John gets to use the mayor’s office. There’s nothing inconsistent about this unless it’s impossible to be both the mayor and a father. So (1)-(4) are only inconsistent if Jesus is not both God and man.
So I don’t think there’s really any surprise here; I think most die-hard Chalcedonians would tend to read it this way first off, and probably more than a few people who aren’t, just because it’s the way it usually is read in this context.
The real question, I think, is: in what other sense would one take (2)? The only other sense I can think of is, “Anything that is God is not human”; then it would be a straightforward denial of the Incarnation. Read that way, I suspect most people who voted “All True” would vote “2 False”. It amounts to much the same thing, since the move is to affirm that something can be both.
Dale,
As promised, my ‘refutation of the Trinity and divinity of Christ’ will begin after my current series ‘Virgin Birth on Trial’ is complete.
Joseph and Yonaton: yes, 1-4 are, as stated, an inconsistent set. From any three of them, you can infer the falsity of the remaining one. Why, then, is the most popular answer that all four are true? I believe there are two things going on. Some probably accept what I call mysterianism – that is, they’re resigned to believing sets of claims which seem (even after reflection) inconsistent. I’m guessing that more, though, hold that some fancy interpreting of 1-4 renders them consistent. I’m not quite sure what people had in mind… that might work different ways. Anyone want to give a consistent reading of 1-4?
Joseph – glad you’re reading! The closest I’ve come to giving my positive views is in my two papers in Religious Studies. In the later one, I argue that the NT writers identify God and the Father. I don’t think I’m an “Arian”, and I’d also want to quibble about the usefulness of that crusty old term – there haven’t ever really been many “Arians” (i.e. people strongly influenced by the theology of Arius himself). In some ways my own views are still forming and indeterminate, and I guess I have sort of Lockean views about how much traditional speculative theology is mandatory for Christians… In any case, I guess my views about Christ are cleanly away from Son modalism, and away from much of the “Latin” tradition as well.
Vynette – Please let us know when you post your promised refutation of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. I sure a lot of us would want to discuss your thoughts on the matter. About the NT – in several places it sure seems to paint a picture of Jesus as worship-worthy. And scholars like Larry Hurtado have shown that worship-worthy type views about Christ go way, way back, to the times of Paul’s letters.
Jeff – keep up the good work, man.
The wording of the poll is designed to include only believers in ‘divinity’ teachings. For those who take the position that the New Testament paints a totally different picture of Jesus of Nazareth, the only possible point on which to cast a vote is Number 4.
he considers your theft very much a compliment!
I don’t mean to be rude, but this poll reminds me why I’m glad I’m not a Christian. The two most popular answers are accepting all as true, which is contradictory, or saying that G-d is a man. To the contrary, the prophet Samuel says G-d isn’t human. (1 Sam 15,1)
Good poll! Love the site. Claims (1)-(4) very much seem inconsistent. So it’s interesting that most people vote that each of them is true. I’m inclined to think that only one of them is false (okay, I also think the final claim is false, but I don’t think tha author intends that to be a distinct claim). I take it one can’t vote for more than one as false. I went for it being false that God is not human. It seems my view may run the risk of what many folk call modalism. Where can we find out what your positive views are on the Trinity, Dale? I have a hunch that you think God and the Father are one and the same, the Father is not human, so God is not human. One might say that runs the risk of Arianism. But that might be alright. Some of my best friends are Arians!
Best wishes,
Joseph
I think that the statement “Jesus is human” has to be false because he is risen.
He was changed and his mortality put on imortality.
Had it stated Jesus was human, it would have been true.
PS. I am a former oneness pentecostal, I think I understand the complications of their misguided doctrines. My book, Life after Legalism is advertised on this site.
While I don’t debate it directly I explain how they miss the mark.
Now this question was just as confusing and tricky as those found on securities license exams! 🙂 A word to the wise, read carefully, think slowly, before answering. (Actually 6 words to the wise.)
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