Skip to content

podcast 215 – Two Intelligent Responses to My Challenge

Play

Do you say that a or the main point of the New Testament is that “Jesus is God,” like David Wood, Greg Koukl, J. Warner Wallace, Ravi Zacharias, Robert M. Bowman Jr. or Scot McKnight?

If so, how you evaluate this argument? Do you agree with each premise? Do you agree that each conclusion follows from what went before?

  1. God and Jesus differ.
  2. Things which differ are two (i.e. are not numerically identical)
  3. Therefore, God and Jesus are two (not numerically identical). (1, 2)
  4. For any x and y, x and y are the same god only if x and y are not two (i.e. are numerically identical).
  5. Therefore, God and Jesus are not the same god. (3,4)
  6. There is only one god.
  7. Therefore, either God is not a god, or Jesus is not a god. (5, 6)
  8. God is a god.
  9. Therefore, Jesus is not a god. (7,8)

I have argued that this argument is sound, and that all thinking Christians ought to accept it as such, thus accepting its conclusion. The only ways out are denying at least one of the premises: 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8. But 1, 6, and 8 are implied by the Bible, and 2 and 4 seem to be self-evident truths.

With very few exceptions, evangelical apologists who urge that “Jesus is God” have ignored the argument. But now, there is a trickle of responses – and they are by people who do understand the argument. In this episode, I interact with their comments on it. One fusses at the language I use in the argument, while the other urges that it badly begs the question by employing a premise which any (trinitarian) Christian has to deny.

Is he right?

Corrections: towards the end I mention NT passages which say or plainly assume that the Father is Jesus’s God. I should have said Romans 15:6 (not 15:16) – and I’m not sure how I included Eph 3:13 (only Eph 1:3 and 1:17 are explicit here). Thanks to Jim Seward in the trinities podcast Facebook group for the corrections!

Links for this episode:

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

11 thoughts on “podcast 215 – Two Intelligent Responses to My Challenge”

  1. Pingback: Dale Tuggy’s Challenge – Beginning of Wisdom

  2. Dale

    To be fair – trins have one God – if “God” is defined by only nature. Trins have two Gods if “God is defined as a person. Essentially they have created a hybrid mono-/poly- theistic system.

    Frankly, there is nothing unusual about this – nor even thinking of that God in a singular manner. We all know of the Hydra – or the Scandanavian many headed Gods – yet each “God” with many heads was thought of and described as one God.

    My point is both accurately represent what the trin is – as opposed to errant affirmations by both themselves and unitarians.

    I found this article interesting as well – albeit a bit tangential to the above.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity

  3. If I had to say, I’d ask about premise #2. I don’t know if it’s true or false because I think the statement is ambiguous. It needs to be de-ambiguated in order for me to have a view on its truth-value. I suspect that the de-ambiguation requires metaphysics, and further, that we might disagree in our metaphysics. What then? Potential clarifications: is a token of property P numerically different from a token of property Q? Perhaps. But that might assume that a token of a property is e.g., analyzed along a modular-trope theory. There are various other analyses. In other words, while premise #2 might seem obvious to some readers, it isn’t to me because I’m aware of various ways to interpret the sentence. Given all this, I’m fairly committed to the claim that #2 as it stands is not a self-evident truth. So, perhaps #2 is false; but I need some metaphysical clarification before claiming that.

    1. Hey Scott – thanks for the comment. I don’t see a lot of wiggle room in 2. I can clarify that I have in mind intrinsic difference, and that I mean the present tense seriously. So the basis of 2 is the conviction is that if a and b are now different, then a and b are two, because it is absolutely impossible for something to (intrinsically) be and not be some one way at one time. The statement is neutral as concerns theories about properties, it seems to me. I’m not even sure that metaphysical expertise is called for. In a follow-up post I say you can take “God” in this argument to refer to the Trinity, or to the Father. In either case, wouldn’t you agree that we can refer both that, and to Jesus, and that we can know that the first thing differs intrinsically from Jesus? It seems to me that any Christian is committed to this qua Christian.

      Anyway, about your charge of a bad sort of ambiguity in 2, I don’t see it. I think you need to spell out clearly the two or more readings, and show that one is true and the other is false, or at least that they differ in their epistemic status.

      1. Thanks for the reply. Here are some further reflections.

        Q: Is the statement a logical claim or a metaphysical claim, or both? If it is metaphysical, then I don’t think you can avoid details theories of properties. I know of a metaphysical tradition according to which number supervenes on “esse” (act of existence), such that there can be different definitions (where a definition is a complex concept) that refer to numerically the same “esse.” So, difference in definition does not entail numerical distinction between things. Perhaps this theory is false. But, serious philosophers held it (e.g., Severus of Antioch, and all those miaphysites, and Thomas Aquinas). I take this as evidence that you can’t really avoid metaphysical details if the claim is a metaphysical one.

        Q: I realize that you reject “numerical sameness without identity” as a metaphysical claim. Do you accept it as a logical claim or as making semantic sense? Can I conceive of non-identical subjects of predication who share numerically the same trope (of deity) (in which case some predications are true of one subject but not true of another subject)? I think you can conceive of it (which is different than asking whether you believe it). If it makes semantic sense, then the inference from difference to numerical difference is not obviously a necessary truth.

  4. 6. There is only one god.

    9. Therefore, Jesus is not a god. (7,8)

    Some from both the Trinitarian and Unitarian camps would say that premise 6 and conclusion 9 are questionable.

    1. Hi Sean, thanks for the comment. To opine that 9 is questionable is to miss the point of the argument, which (if sound) establishes 9. Not sure why you think a unitarian would question 6. Certainly, most would not. Even those unitarians who think that the Son is a divine person usually don’t think that he’s divine in the same way that God is, but only in some lesser way. (If they think it is the same way – I guess those would be the few binitarians out there I’ve heard about…)

      Someone might question 6 because they thought it said: There is only one “god.” I.e. there is only one who can properly be described or addressed using that word. There are surely scriptural counterexamples to such a claim. I call that claim mono-theos-ism or mono-“theos”-ism, which is a point about words, unlike monotheism.

      1. Hi Dale,

        Just to be clear, I’m not disagreeing with you, but in light of modern scholarship on the nature of ancient Jewish monotheism, I’m simply observing that some could take issue with points 6 and 9.

        To bring in one biblical text that some might say bears on the issue, take Psalms 8:5(6), which says that God made man “a little lower than ELOHIM”. Most translators are reluctant to render ELOHIM in its most natural sense here, as some render it “God”, some “angels”, some “heavenly beings”, etc. But an accurate literal rendering would be “gods”, i.e. God man a little lower than the gods, and those “gods” were angels per Hebrews 2:7.

        Such biblical examples appear to be in harmony with what D.S. Russell once wrote:

        “?it must be remembered that monotheism, for the Old Testament prophets, had a connotation very different in many respects from that which it has in modern thought. It is false to assume that the Old Testament writers, however exalted their conception of the Godhead might be, conceived of God as alone in isolated majesty over against men, the creatures of his will. There is ample evidence to show that this conception of monotheism was held in conjunction with a belief in a spiritual world peopled with supernatural and superhuman beings who, in some ways, shared the nature, though not the being, of God.” (The Method & Message of Jewish Apocalyptic), p. 235

        So it’s true that angels are “called gods”, and so the question is: Is this (a) mere poetic hyperbole, or (b) is there something about their nature that made the appellation seem appropriate to the ancient writers? If b, which would be in harmony with D.S. Russell’s words, then could it potentially present a challenge to 6? If it poses a challenge to 6, then would it not also present a challenge to 9 for those who believe that Jesus really was made greater than the ELOHIM? How was he made greater? Merely in office? Or, did it also have something to do with the fact that he was given immortality, which, as far as we know, the angels don’t have in any sort of absolute sense?

        If my recollection is correct, you interacted with such questions in your original podcast (I haven’t had time to listen to the more recent one), but given the ambiguity involved with the two referenced premises, I’m merely showing that there’s a bit of work to do to get there, and not all will convinced. Greg Stafford, for example, is a non-Trinitarian who firmly believes that Jesus is a second god, who has only one among the gods (angels) who is greater: God the Father. He’s not really a “binitarian” because he holds that the Father is the greatest of the “divine beings”, so there’s no co-equality.

        1. So basically Greg Stafford is simply an “Arian” (in the popular – albeit, as I understand from Dale, not in the technical sense). These guys always trip me up with the theology – and I have learned to check their Christology asap – and always find they deny the man Christ Jesus – albeit the use the term… but don’t have a genuine man… but some divine being appearing in human form (never met a “man” like that…:-) )

Comments are closed.