Following an ancient tradition of mocking modalists as “patripassians”, she seems to think the biggest or the main problem with modalism is that it identifies the Father and the Son. (pp. 1, 3) On her modalist theory, they are temporal parts (person-stages) of one being, but they are not numerically identical – they are different temporal parts of God. As she observes, on this theory, “There is… no time at while f=s.” (p. 3) Thus, her theory doesn’t identify any of the persons with one another, or with God for that matter.
Many metaphysicians, she knows, reject the theory of temporal parts, and the perdurance theory of how a thing can “last” through time.
But moving on, is this theory monotheistic? She urges,
All we need to capture the spirit of monotheism is the doctrine that at any time there is exactly one God. (3)
Huh? She draws an analogy with US Presidents; at any given time, there’s one one.
But imagine this: a religion positing a hereditary monarchy of gods. Zeus and the Mrs. give birth to Zeus Jr. He fathers Zeus III, etc. Suppose the parents always die off as soon as the offspring attains deity, and that the mom isn’t ever divine. (Sorry – there’s a glass ceiling when it comes to divinity.) In this scenario, at all times, there’s one deity, one god. But who would call this “monotheism”? It’d be an oddball kind of polytheism, wouldn’t it? After all, it posits many gods. It might be henotheistic over a given stretch of time (e.g. for the time being, we should all worship only Zeus IV… until Zeus V comes along).
She admits the analogy with presidents is limited: “there is no person who is President during both the Bush and Clinton administrations.” (p. 4) And then she smashes the whole proposal:
…while it rules out a pantheon of gods it does not rule out a succession of gods. Moreover… it is hard to see how see how any of [the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] could have the properties requisite for full or maximal divinity. (p. 4)
Right – such as being eternal or everlasting, and consequently, as she points out, omnipotence. (p. 4) So, back to the drawing board. She suggests that we need to rethink monotheism. Look out, folks. Here comes the David Lewis. 🙂
Next time: tweaking the definition of “monotheism”.
I’m not sure I quite grasp the category of “serial, non-essential FSH noumenal modalism”, although perhaps it’s just the ‘noumenal’ part throwing me off; and possibly this might be relevant to the evaluation of Baber’s argument. If we compared it to the Tri-Neeson, I suppose the Tri-Neeson would be serial nonessential FSH phenomenal modalism (the original idea is that you’d watch all three at once, so it would be non-serial, but obviously it allows a serial version); what would have to be different about it to make it count as noumenal rather than phenomenal? That Neeson was actually being all three at once? But then it’s hard to see how we would actually have modalism.
Yeah, false dilemma too…
And you got to this conclusion how??? And even if he is, YOU’RE TRINITARIAN! Oh…my…gawd… I thought the purpose for your paper is NOT evaluating alternatives, instead it is to assume trinitarianism and come up with a super-model endorsing all morphs of it…?!?!?
And this belongs PRECISELY outside biblical Christianity (yeah, and before you repeat yourself, even if you take an expanded canon…)
OMG, Dale, you’re an Arian! 🙂
Let me tell you what I’m doing: I am actually contemplating a book, not an edited book but a study, on the Trinity. Possibly also Christology because Nicea was unfinished business that was revisited at Calcecdon–and I’m not sure that that revisitation did good. I’m actually taking Greek for this!
There are lots of strands, including the imitation of Christ theme, but I guess I start with the idea that Christ is a focus for adoration. I have 2 pieces out now on the Eucharist, one forthcoming in RS if it hasn’t already forthcame, in which I take that line–really the idea that it’s all a rational for the practice of kneeling, gazing and worshipping. And I’m thinking of how this might work for the incarnation doctrine.
From this perspective “what matters” is precisely that Jesus can be treated as God in disguise–that we can have art (icons, statues, etc.) representing him that figure as focus objects for worship.
Pretty poor solutions, I think.
An excellent question. I would answer that is a major theme of the NT that Jesus is a model to us, that his obedience in the face of suffering is the paradigm of Christian faithfulness. He cannot serve as such a model if he is God himself, God in disguise.
Fair enough – I’m going to finish slowly working through your piece, with the view of making clear to everyone what is going on. I think we will return to this issue of revising the theory in the direction you suggest here.
And you are whoever who doesn’t like what ancient Christian and Hebrew writings – canonical and non-canonical – had to say about who God and Christ are and couldn’t care either, because your taste is a popularised freak-theology…so what??? Why not judge what Robinson says on the factuality and feasibility of what he had to say? I could have quoted Dunn or McGrath or Knox or Pittenger, who say the same thing. Fact remains that your epistemology in terms of being, nature and essences are at odds with the ancient thought of who God and Christ were. Maybe I don’t understand your motivation, but apparently its being derived from ancient sources or not is not your concern.
By what standard do you determine what’s a good or a bad “program?” If taste is so subjective and phenomenological, then why the need at all to evaluate and prefer one taste above another if you have no standard to measure or even approximate a model against??? Why bother with modern notions of the trinity and not rather try and expound on the Shepherd of Hermas’ weird Christology? Or isn’t that your taste?
Maybe I do not understand your motivations for believing in the trinity. Or maybe your evaluation of TRUTH is not the same as mine…I don’t know…
I had never heard of J.A.T. Robinson, so I have been looking for information. Judging from what I have read, I am inclined to agree with Harriet’s assessment.
In this Interview with C. S. Lewis, the interviewer asks Lewis what he thinks of one of Robinson’s books.
I found the whole interview tremendously interesting.
So, this is J. A. T Robinson, an atheist collecting bishops’ pay, writing c. 1970 when the fundamental theorem of theology was “Hebrew-good, Greek-bad.” And the usual invocation of the Hebrew prophetic speaking truth to power which, was supposed to cash out as marching in peace demonstrations. This, along with the program of trashing liturgy, was supposed to appeal to Modern Secular Man.
A agree that most churchgoers–those who are left after the program Robinson et. al. installed–have no interest in the metaphysics of the Trinity doctrine. Why should they? Metaphysics is a special taste. You don’t need to know what goes on under the hood to drive the car. But for those who have the taste, the metaphysical machinery is of the greatest interest.
Absolutely. As great a theologian Barth is believed to be, his is merely another version in his attempt to conceptualise GOD with concepts both alien and at home with the NT.
How complex do you think is this going to get? As it stands the rank-and-file church goer has a concept of the Trinity as unorthodox and unsophisticated as one could get. Without the philosophical training or the cognitive prowess to conceptually differentiate between “being” and “person,” or even your proposal above, they unknowingly worship as God either more than one, period, or only one and not the others. Tweaking models and fine-tuning concepts through hardly-differentiable language will do NOTHING to the worshipping minds of the church-goer. Still again, will they find themselves between a rock and a hard place: the FEEL of polytheism when worshiping as God more than one on the one hand and the intimidating philosophical labyrinth on the other. Add to it the changing corridors and designs of that labyrinth and what you sit with is the same dilemma you had before even undertaking your quest to begin with. In my opinion, the central error lies in the maintenance of an epistemology of essences, persons and natures utterly incomprehensible to both the ancient and modern mind and irreconcilable with the biblical sources.
I’m in much greater agreement with J.A.T Robinson who said regarding functional identity
I think Robinson has a valid point here. God expressing himself in and through media is much more relatable than one who cannot decide who and how he wants to be understood…
Yeah, this is the classic problem with modalism: inter-trinitarian relations and, in particular, making sense of Biblical passages in which Jesus is represented as praying to his Father. But there are two ways you can go with this. One way is to kick the Trinity problem to Christology and understand Christ’s praying as an action of his human nature. Another way, I suppose, is just to ignore these Bible stories.
To what extent do these stories about Jesus praying matter religiously? How do they figure in the religious belief and practice of Christians–if, indeed, they figure at all? What seems to matter religiously for Christians is Christ as a focus of religious devotion, occupying or being represented at a place to which one can direct worship and adoration.
Harriet, I would posit that God has more than one consciousness if I want to maintain that God is one person and take into consideration the prayers of Christ.
@ CarolJean: Why posit more than one consciousness?
@ Jaco: Why three? I suppose this gets to my meta-theology: the aim is that make sense of the Church’s practices, in particular liturgy. In the liturgy there’s lots of mention of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” So it seems to me that what one wants in a theological account of the Trinity is to come up with an account that licenses that language with the least possible ontological commitment. How much can we get away with and still get to talk the religious (i.e. churchy) talk?
More positively though, what motivates the number, speculatively is this: “Father” is (I think Barth puts it this way) God in his primary subjectivity–God in himself, God unknown. “Son” is God incarnate in Jesus (and possibly other avetars. “Holy Spirit” is God incarnate in the Church. But as I said, this is speculative.
Ok, so the meaning of FATHER changes from an identity (pre-incarnate) to a more filial nomination, regardless of whether the identity is Father or Son or Holy Ghost…
Then why limit the modes of worldly activity as only three? Why can’t we add another mode, such as the Natural Self-manifestation of God according to Romans 1:20? And the first sentence above should rather be, “if God revealed himself AS HIMSELF in different ways at different times and places…” It would remove the equivocation, since self revelation in something/someone else does not render that medium God in itself…
Why not just posit that a divine person can have more than one consciousness and still be only one divine person? Stop thinking of the divine person in terms of a human person.
Well, I re-read my paper and I’m not sure that I endorse the position I adopted there any more. If anything though I might prefer an even more serious Sabellianism. On this kind of view “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” behave like phase sortals. God is Father prior to Incarnation, but “Father” doesn’t refer to his pre-incarnation stages. Rather it’s the term people would normally use to pick out to refer to God (in toto) during those times and within appropriate contexts. This is surely monotheistic. And it doesn’t open up the way for the Zeuses, their kid and grandkid analogy.
It’s the view that I was thinking about at the time, that the only Trinity is the economic Trinity. And why not? Wasn’t the Trinity doctrine motivated in the interests of explaining God’s actions in the world, including Incarnation and coming of the Holy Spirit (in effect, the final Incarnation of God as Church)? I suppose the next move was the idea that if God revealed himself in different ways at different times and places there must be something intrinsic to God, some system of distinctions or differences, to explain the different manifestations of divinity in the world. Ok. But it goes beyond that to assume that those intrinsic differences line up one-to-one with God’s three modes of worldly activity.
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