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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. Read More »Daniel Waterland on “The Father is the only God” texts – Part 1

You’re Foolin’ Yourself and You Don’t Believe It – Part 1

I’ve been reading I Told Me So (review) by Gregg Ten Elshof, a USC PhD who who teaches and chairs the Philosophy Department at my undergraduate alma mater. He’s been thinking about this topic for a long time (part 2) and so far, I really like the book. It is clearly written, insightful, and he trains his guns on self-deceptions by Christians in particular. Some of… Read More »You’re Foolin’ Yourself and You Don’t Believe It – Part 1

SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – ROUND 5 – BURKE – Part 3

Were there any “biblical unitarians”, or what I call humanitarian unitarians in the early church?

Buckle your seatbelts – this post isn’t a quickie.

First, to review – in this whole debate, Burke has argued that all the NT writers were humanitarians. But if this is so, one would expect there to be a bulk of humanitarian unitarians in the times immediately after the apostles. Here, as we saw last time, Bowman pounces. All the main 2nd century theologians, he urges are confused or near trinitarians. (Last time, I explained that this is a dubious play on the word “trinitarian”. My term for them is non-Arian subordinationists.) There’s not a trace, Bowman urges, of any 1st c. humanitarians – with the exception of some off-base heretical groups, like the Ebionites.

We’re talking about mainly the 100s CE here, going into the first half of the 200s. The general picture, as I see it, is this. Early in the century, we find the “apostolic fathers” basically echoing the Bible, increasingly including the NT (the NT canon was just starting to be settled on during this century). However, some of them seem to accept some kind of pre-existence for Christ (in God’s mind? or as a divine self alongside God?), and they’re often looser, more Hellenized in their use of “god” (so even though as in the NT the Father is the God of the Jews, the creator, Jesus is more frequently than in the NT called “our God” etc.) But clearly – no equally divine triad, no tripersonal God, and in most, no clear assertion of the eternality of the Son. In the second half of the century, starting with Justin Martyr, we find people expounding  a kind of subordinationism obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish Platonic theologian Read More »SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – ROUND 5 – BURKE – Part 3

Duns Scotus manuscript pic

Scotus on Richard of St. Victor?

A postscript to our Richard series: I was reading the interesting and dense The Mysteries of Christianity, by 19th c. German Catholic theologian Joseph Scheeben, on Richard of St. Victor, and he says the following in a footnote: Scotus states decisively that Richard of St. Victor adduces rationes necessariae for the Trinity, but not evidenter necessariae, because the principles from which he argues are not… Read More »Scotus on Richard of St. Victor?

Negative Mysterianism Explained

It’s all so clear now! Happy April Fools Day! (A link for those confused about the subject line.)

St. Loyola

Loyola: tradition trumps sense perception

St. Ignatius Loyola (1495-1556) founded the Jesuit order and authored a famous book of Spiritual Exercises. There, in a list of rules for correct belief, we have this: Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the… Read More »Loyola: tradition trumps sense perception

confused kid

Mysterians at work in Dallas

confused kid
Clearly, the instructor’s work has been accomplished.

What I call positive mysterianism about the Trinity is the view that the doctrine, as best we can formulate it, is apparently contradictory.  Now many Christian philosophers resort to this in the end, but only after one or more elaborate attempts to spell the doctrine out in a coherent way. On the other hand, some jump more quickly for the claim, not really expanding on or interpreting the standard creedal formulas much at all. These are primarily who I have in mind when I use the label “positive mysterian”.

I ran across a striking version of this recently, in a blog post by theologian C. Michael Patton, who blogs at Parchment and Pen: a theology blog. In his interesting post, he says that all the typical analogies for the Trinity (shamrock, egg, water-ice-vapor, etc.) are useful only for showing what the Trinity doctrine is not.

This contrasts interestingly with what I call negative mysterians. Typically, and this holds for many of the Fathers, as well as for people like Brower and Rea nowadays, they hold that all these analogies are useful, at least when you pile together enough of them, for showing what the doctrine is. Individually, they are highly misleading, and only barely appropriate, but they seem to think that multiplying analogies like these results in our  achieving a minimal grasp of what is being claimed. Maybe they think the seeming inconsistency of the analogies sort of cancels out the misleading implications of each one considered alone.

In any case, in Patten’s view, the best you can do is to Read More »Mysterians at work in Dallas

Quote: Stephen Nye on disliking the clear as such (Dale)

…I will not deny clear things concerning the Trinity, as some do, only because they are clear. I don’t think we may argue after this manner; “The Doctrine of the Trinity is a Mystery; your Account of it is no Mystery, therefore it is not the true Doctrine of the Trinity”: For it will be still mysterious enough to us, tho we do not reject… Read More »Quote: Stephen Nye on disliking the clear as such (Dale)

a quote every theology student working on the Trinity or Incarnation should memorize

Respected Catholic philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso corrects some pervasive baloney about persons which theologians are still repeating, these 22 years later! The asterisk marks his footnote – this whole passage is an aside in a very rich paper of his. Out of politeness, I omit the author of the wrongheaded passage, and I’ve added some bold highlighting to the whole thing. We’ve been over some… Read More »a quote every theology student working on the Trinity or Incarnation should memorize

Heretical “trinitarians” – evolution of a word

Following up on the previous post – the word “trinitarian” may be an adjective or a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary lists four adjective meanings: (here’s my editing of relevant parts of their entry, emphasis added) 2. Theol. Relating to the Trinity; holding the doctrine of the Trinity (opp. to Unitarian). In early use, Trinitarian heretic, one holding heretical views as to the Trinity: 1656… Read More »Heretical “trinitarians” – evolution of a word

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 8 – Rational Reinterpretation, cont.

Moses Stuart (1780-1852), professor at Andover Theological Seminary,
and NOT a fan of Rational Reconstruction (image credit)


What, if anything, is wrong with with the strategy of Resolution through Rational Reinterpretation? And why are most theologians so cold towards this strategy, while most Christian philosophers love it? Consider this quote by Moses Stuart on one of Leibniz’s takes on the Trinity:

The celebrated Leibniz was requested by a Loefler, who had undertaken to refute the writings of a certain English Antitrinitarian, to give him an affirmative definition of the persons in the Godhead. He sent for answer the following: – “Several persons in an absolute substance numerically the same, signify several, particular, intelligent substances essentially related.” On farther consideration, he abandoned this, and sent a second, which was, – “Several persons, in an absolute substance numerically the same, mean relative, incommunicable modes of subsisting.”

If Leibniz actually understood this, I believe he must have been a better master of metaphysics than any person who has ever read his definition.Read More »Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 8 – Rational Reinterpretation, cont.

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 5 – Aquinas on Implicit Faith (Dale)

We’re exploring the response of Restraint – when confronted with an apparently contradictory doctrine, might it not be a good idea for the believer to simply admit that she doesn’t know what it means? Last time we looked at the idea of “implicit faith”. What, if anything, is wrong with this? Consider this exchange: Doubter: Do you believe X? Believer: Heck yeah. Doubter: Doesn’t X… Read More »Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 5 – Aquinas on Implicit Faith (Dale)

on believing what you don’t at all understand

Whoever says he believes what he does not at all understand, knows not what belief is, knows also not what he believes; and therefore, he believes in fact nothing, but it only seems to him [he believes]… Certainly nobody can believe something other than what he considers true… If reason is not necessary to grasp the articles of faith, then consequently it follows that the… Read More »on believing what you don’t at all understand

Quotes: Lewis Ayres on Pro-Nicene 3rd-4th century trinitarianism

 


A simple being containing multiple distinct “persons” – D’oh!

Theologian Lewis Ayres is the author of this worthy book. In it, he hammers the point that the Latin vs. Social trinitarian categories aren’t helpful in understanding post-Constantinople trinitarian theology. I think he’s right about that, though I persist in using the terminology because it is helpful for 20th and 21st century theories. Ayres’s book is a wonderful piece of patristic scholarship, but it is also an extended polemic against social trinitarians. Basically, he thinks that what he aptly calls the pro-Nicene tradition has gotten short shrift in recent theological work on the Trinity, and he very helpfully presents the core of that tradition and bats down a great many mis-readings of it. Obviously, he’s sympathetic to this sort of trinity theory, to put it mildly. This will definitely come up when I discuss social theories.

Here I just wanted to pass on a striking quote, which to me spotlights a central problem that many people have with the mainstream classic Latin or Pro-Nicene tradition.Read More »Quotes: Lewis Ayres on Pro-Nicene 3rd-4th century trinitarianism

red fox

Christopher Stead on mysteries in theology

I allow, indeed I declare, that the mystery of the Godhead surpasses rational apprehension; and it may be that in the end it will have to be represented by a contradiction. But it is essential that this should happen only when all our rational resources are at an end. It is ludicrous if we represent divine mysteries by avoidable contradictions, by muddles, which more disciplined… Read More »Christopher Stead on mysteries in theology

“an Error in counting…” Who wrote this?

I’ve seen this passage quoted by at least three of my favorite Christian philosophers. Unfortunately, they’ve misattributed it to the famous English antitrinitarian John Biddle (also spelled Bidle) (1615-62). I believe it was Keith Yandell who found it in this old book, where it is misattributed to Biddle. Why did the theologian Leonard Hodgson make this mistake? I’ve seen a copy of the book, the… Read More »“an Error in counting…” Who wrote this?

John Hick - philosopher

Is the doctrine of the Incarnation prior to & the source of trinitarian doctrine? – Part 2

An interesting and much more recent statement from John Hick, along the lines of my last post. …Since then [around 1993] the focus of much theological discussion has moved from christology to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is partly because theology always does go the rounds of the traditional topics – creation, sin, incarnation, atone­ment, Trinity, church, heaven and hell – and after a… Read More »Is the doctrine of the Incarnation prior to & the source of trinitarian doctrine? – Part 2

That important doctrine… whatever it is

I was reading an article on the Trinity by Phillip Cary, and was struck by this passage, at the start of his paper. When I was growing up in the faith, I heard a lot about the doctrine of the Trinity, but never learned what the doctrine was. In high school and college I worshiped at faithful, Biblical churches in which pastors often affirmed the… Read More »That important doctrine… whatever it is

The Orthodox Formulas 3: the “Athanasian” Creed

The so-called Athanasian Creed (also known by the Latin words it begins with, Quicunque vult) is considered by many to be the very definition of “the” orthodox doctrine. It is of uncertain origin, although many readers think it has a strongly Augustinian flavor (which if true shows it is not from Athanasius himself, who died before Augustine was converted). It has long been considered authoritative… Read More »The Orthodox Formulas 3: the “Athanasian” Creed