The scene, an American evangelical church, around Christmas time. The pastor prays,
Heavenly Father, than you so much for sending us your Son! We’re so grateful for your perfect of gift of forgiveness, of eternal life. Help us, this season, to remember the reason for it. God, thank you for coming to be born, to die for us. In your name we pray, amen.
At the beginning of this prayer, he’s addressing God, aka “Heavenly Father.” Then, seemingly talking to this same one, he thanks him for dying on the cross. Obviously, he’s talking about Jesus at the end of this prayer. But he’s also talking about God; he seems to think that Jesus and God are one and the same. He seems to be reasoning like this:
- Jesus is God.
- God is the Father.
- Therefore, Jesus is the Father.
(Each case of “is” here means numerical identity.) His justification for 1 is evangelical tradition. This is what it has boiled down the catholic two natures and Trinity doctrines into. His justification for 2 is the New Testament. “God” there is nearly always the Father – that’s presupposed throughout. He is none other than the unique God. 3 follows logically from 1 & 2. If 1 & 2 are true, then so is 3. This is impeccable reasoning; as far as inferring 3 from 1 & 2, our pastor makes no mistake.
But 3 conflicts straightforwardly with the New Testament. God, that is, the Father, did not die on the cross. Rather, the unique, human Son of God died on the cross, an atoning sacrifice for the sins of his fellow humans. (John 3:16; Romans 5:8-9) Starting with Tertullian, ancient mainstream Christians denounced claims like 3 as “patripassianism” – as the false claim that the one true God, the Father, died for us.
No, he didn’t. He can’t, as he’s always been immortal. In contrast, the human Son of God was, after his death, raised to immortality. But he wasn’t immortal on that fateful day at Golgotha.
We must, then, deny 3. But then, we must also deny 1 and/or 2. If both were true, then so would 3. But it’s not. 2 seems inviolable. Yes, Jesus and others are called “God” or “gods,” but no NT author, rightly understood, identifies the Son of God with the God whose Son he is. Even the many “two natures” speculations generally don’t mean to imply 1. It looks like we must deny 1. Indeed, we can know on NT grounds that 1 is false, just by keeping in mind a self-evident principle of reason.
And it is not clear that the 4th-5th century trinitarian traditions actually commit us to 1. But 1 is an actual effect of the official trinitarianism of present-day evangelicals. Call it “pop theology” or “folk religion” if you like. Simply put, they confuse together Jesus and his God. If you only defend the system as it exists, this is part of what you’re defending.
Stop defending it. These trinitarian Christian philosophers know better; they deny 1, and try to interpret the Trinity and two-natures traditions in ways that don’t imply 1. They don’t just mutter “Trinity” and hope that somehow this means we can affirm 1 & 2 while denying 3. We can’t. Denying 3 comes a price, and they pay it (denying 1). (Some of them also deny 2, but that’s another conversation.) And unitarian Christians too deny 1; no such, philosopher or not, agrees with 1, read as a numerical identity claim. And careful readers of the NT like Dr. Larry Hurtado and Dr. James Dunn not only battle against the many misreadings of the NT which imply 1, but also argue against 1 that the NT authors consistently distinguish between the two of them, and never run them together, though they do of course associate together God and his Son.
Did you get this confusion for Christmas? It’s not too late to take it back. Just explain to them that two different beings can’t be one and the same as a certain being. Get the store credit; the Christian theology store has better things to offer.
This is an unusual prayer for sure. Part 1 shows the sort of care that both Trinitarians and Unitarians appreciate, while part 2 switches tack sharply. A Trinitarian would probably raise his eyebrows at part 2 because of the sharpness of the turn, addressing now the Son rather than the Father, but probably still nothing too untoward. The Unitarian puts his hands up in the air. (The evangelical modalist is not really in the picture because he would very rarely place Father and Son in the same sentence or have one acting on the other.)
However:
My suspician is that part 2 is actually a standard modalist prayer. I don’t know, but I suspect either of the following to be true (please tell me if I’m on the right track Dale):
EITHER (my first hypothesis)
This is a hypothetical quote in order to make the points you raise in this post
OR (my second hypothesis)
The quotes are real but are conflations or juxtapositioned, however the effect still creates an unnatural proximity between the two parts of the prayers.
I could be wrong, but I can’t make the prayer feel natural from any theological position.
Finally regarding the concluding sentence about “two different beings” – Unitarians, this is my heart, really, really need to work more on what does unite these two … two whats? Here’s a new attempt: two inseparables. I believe Unitarians must not finish the sentence with two-distinct-being ideas. We need to also focus on where there is common ground also. Listening to podcast 118 with Mr Dixon, I hear this again: “I don’t fully understand who God is or who fully understand who Jesus is”. There is something missing here too: “I don’t fully understand how God is *joined* (i.e. the unfathomable depth of relationship) to his Son”. I hope and pray this kind of approach will remain true to both Unitarian and Trinitarian positions and I hope reduce the gulf. I feel there is a lot of work to be done by Unitarians on these aspects of God’s ineffability if they (we) are to gain in credibility in the eyes of the mainstream church.
Hi John,
The prayer is not an exact quote, but is very much like prayers I have heard very many times, and even recently, in evangelical churches. It’s not particularly trinitarian, but is the fruit of evangelical “Jesus is God” apologetics. That phrase is most naturally understood – whatever distinctions a speaker may keep in his back pocket – as meaning that they are the same self.
I’m not sure I understand your point at the end. By “distinct” I mean not numerically identical – that is compatible with Jesus and God being alike in various ways, and united in will and action. We have to say, don’t we, that they’re two beings – one is a man, and one is a (the) god, and nothing can be both, for it would have to have contrary essential features.
One reason why I don’t emphasize “mystery” as much as many, in order to deal with difficulties, is that I don’t see this being done at all in the NT. God’s ways, plans, and so on, very often can’t be understood, sure. But we don’t see the apostles preaching that in some hard to fathom way Jesus and the Father are one, and in some hard to fathom way they are many. They of course say that they “are one,” but their meaning is clear, in the context – one in action, will, kingdom. For them a “mystery” is a fact now revealed, which was formerly hidden.
Claims that God is “ineffable” – we need to carefully define that term, I suggest. That can be the obvious and uncontroversial claim that we don’t completely understand God, or it could be a denial of monotheism – such claims have always gone hand in hand with the view that the ultimate reality is a something-or-other too great for us to literally apply any concept to – but then, such a being (?) is not a god, not at all characterizable as our heavenly Father. In a forthcoming paper I call this “Ultimism” and classify it as a type of atheism, and a rival to theism. Jesus’s and the apostles’ teach assumes that we can understand God – his character, ways, even essential attributes to a large extent.
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