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Listen to this post:
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This post is occasioned by the following exchange between a couple of Facebook friends:
- Unitarian: “You said that Jesus existed ‘as God’. Did you mean ‘as God the Son’? I presume that by ‘God’ you actually mean the whole Trinity, and I cannot believe that you think that Jesus existed as a Trinity.”
- Trinitarian: “Stop. It. I’m not playing that ridiculous game for the hundredth time.”
The trinitarian goes on to scold the unitarian for playing verbal games, pointing out that for a trinitarian, “God” can refer to the Trinity, or to any of the three Persons. That is correct, and surely not something any unitarian would deny, but I think there’s more than a terminological problem here, and I don’t think that his interlocutor was playing any game. Let me explain.
My trinitarian friend, as a believer in the deity of Christ, you seem to be committed to:
1. Jesus just is (is numerically the same as) God
Why would someone think you’re committed to this? Because of the arguments you make for “the deity of Christ.” But that’s another post.
As a trinitarian, you believe:
2. God just is the Trinity
It is self-evident that = (numerical identity) is transitive. Thus, if Jesus = God, and God = Trinity, it follows that:
3. Jesus just is the Trinity.
Hence, someone may ask you if you believe that Jesus just is the Trinity. It is a fair question, given that you seem committed to both 1 and 2. Also, in some contexts Christians will use “Jesus” as the proper name of the Christian God, which for them just is the Trinity.
BUT of course, everyone knows that 3 “sounds wrong.” It’s not something a trinitarian is supposed to say. Yet, anyone committed to 1 and 2 is thereby committed to the truth of 3. What to do?
So long as your loyalty to the project of trinitarian theology remains intact, you are committed to 2.
The thing to do, as many trinitarians will tell you, is to deny 1. Jesus is not God in the sense of being numerically the same as God. If he were, then whatever is true of one would have to be true of the other. But all Christians know that they have differed in various ways.
Jesus, for any Trinity theory, should be identical with “God the Son,” not with the triune God.
What, then, of the slogan that “Jesus is God’? How should a trinitarian understand that, if it shouldn’t be understood as asserting their numerical identity?
Again, many trinitarians will say that the “is” in “Jesus is God” should be understood as an “is” of predication, that is, of description. “Jesus is God” then, would mean that he is divine, a divine being.
But wait… the Trinity just is the one true God – that’s what it is for a theology to be trinitarian. To be numerically identical to the one God, that entails being divine, surely. So the Trinity is a divine being, and the Son (given that “Jesus is God”) is a divine being. But they’re plainly not the same divine being, as they differ: one is tripersonal, and the other is in some sense 1/3 of the Trinity.
Different divine beings? That’s the same as saying different gods!
It’s not easy to square a trinitarian theology with the idea of monotheism; but you probably knew that already.
This difficulty leaps right out of the Nicene creed, with its talk about “true God from true God” – that sounds like not only using the word “God” ambiguously, for two different beings (Son, Father) but also it sounds like belief in two beings, each of whom is “true God,” i.e. fully divine, so, a god. But that is too many gods!
But parsing the Nicene creed is no easy task. (See my What is the Trinity? for more on that.)
Anyway, my trinitarian friend, if you agree that our argument above is unsound because 1 is false, for the reasons given above, then you also agree that the first three steps of this argument are a sound argument. I encourage you, then, to engage further with that argument. Do you also accept 4, 6, and 8? If not, why not?
Hi Sean,
“As I said, you need to unpack that, because “identified with God” is ambiguous. I still don’t know what you think the text means.”
Is the text in John 1 v 1 “the Word was with God and the Word was God” ambiguous?
I am just paraphrasing it that’s all. In John 1 v 1 the Word is equated with God. Is that ambiguous in your view?
Are you creating an imaginary ambiguity because of your unitarian agenda?
Hi Paul,
I said: “As I said, you need to unpack that, because ‘identified with God’ is ambiguous. I still don’t know what you think the text means.”
You replied: “Is the text in John 1 v 1 ‘the Word was with God and the Word was God’ ambiguous?”
I didn’t ask you about the John 1, I asked about your phrase “identified with God”, which is ambiguous, yes. I don’t know what you think the KJV rendering means precisely because you’ve chosen ambiguous wording. To say that the Word was “identified as God” would be more clear, but “identified with God” is not clear.
You said: “I am just paraphrasing it that’s all. In John 1 v 1 the Word is equated with God. Is that ambiguous in your view?”
Whether I think John 1 is ambiguous isn’t relevant to my question, but once again what you’ve said to clarify matters is, i.e. “equated with God”. What do you mean “equated with God”? If by “equated with God” you mean “identified AS God Himself”, then yes, that’s what the KJV rendering does suggest. But I can’t tell if that’s what you mean in light of the ambiguous phrases you’re using, especially in the context of a discussion of John 1:1.
You asked: “Are you creating an imaginary ambiguity because of your unitarian agenda?”
Let’s try and keep the conversation out of Kindergarten, shall we?
Hi Dale,
To the best of my understanding, Gupta (1980) introduced the position of impure relative identity in the case of identity over time and change. I did not read van Inwagen’s (1995) “And yet they are not three Gods but one God” while I read his (2011). But I guess that van Inwagen (1995) introduced the position of impure relative identity in the case of the Trinity; while Rea (2003) clearly distinguishes between pure relative identity positions of the Trinity and impure relative identity positions of the Trinity.
Tertullian (1885) coined the term “Trinity” that refers to the Father, Son, and Holy who possess one and the same substance while the Father generated the person of at the beginning of creation. This differs from Arianism that states that the Father generated the Son at the beginning of creation while the Father and Son are two different substances. This also differs from the Nicene tradition that states the Trinity is uncreated while the Father generated the Son before any creation or elapse of time while the Father and the Son are the same substance.
Tertullian (1885) also described the occasional tradition of a Roman emperor picking his successor and making the successor a joint emperor. The senior emperor and the junior emperor possessed the same undivided emperorship and identical absolute sovereignty. This was an ancient tradition now called “coregency.” Furthermore, Tertullian (1885) compared the coregency to the Trinity.
Gregory of Nazianzus (1885) described the same occasional tradition of coregency while advocating the Nicene tradition. Also, Gregory of Nazianzus (1885) compared the coregency to the Trinity.
I cited more examples of coregency with absolute sovereignty and focused on the Second Triumvirate because the number of triumvirs matches the number of divine unipersons in the Trinity.
Unfortunately, this blog narrows the margin for each reply, so it eventually becomes unreadable, but I hope this is clear.
References
Goetz, James. 2016. “Identical legal entities and the Trinity: Relative-Social Trinitarianism.” *Journal of Analytic Theology* 4.
Gregory of Nazianzus. 1885. “Oration 29: On the Son.” Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. In *Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers*, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace.
Gupta, Kumar Anil. 1980. *The Logic of Common Nouns: An Investigation in Quantified Modal Logic*.
Rea, Michael. 2003. “Relative identity and the doctrine of the Trinity.” *Philosophia Christi* 5: 431–45.
Tertullian. 1885. *Against Praxeas*. Translated by Peter Holmes. In *Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian*, edited by Allan Menzies. In *Ante-Nicene Fathers* edited by Philip Schaff.
Van Inwagen, Peter. 1995. “And yet they are not three Gods but one God,” in his *God, Knowledge, and Mystery*, 222–59.
Van Inwagen, Peter. 2011. “And yet they are not three Gods but one God.” In *Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity*, edited by Thomas McCall and Michael C. Rea, chapter 12.
James, you have nowhere explained what you (or Gupta) mean by “impure relative identity.” I take it, following Rea, to mean not a kind of identity, but a metaphysics on which there are fundamental, irreducible relative identity relations AND absolute identity relations. (This in contrast to Geach, who thinks only rel id statements are intelligible.) But as Rea points out, on such a scheme, when some X and some Y are “the same F” we still have to ask whether or not they are (absolutely) identical (in logic, =).
About Tertullian, again, you’ve ignored my work on him, and many things he plainly says. For him, “triad” is a plural referring expression, referring to three numerically distinct entities. Yes, they share a “substance” – a material substance – all of it composes the Father, a lesser portion also composes the Son, and a yet lesser portion composes the Spirit. He’s pretty clear about that. And in Against Hermogenes, he explicitly says that there was a time when the Father existed alone – and this is consistent with what he says elsewhere about the triad. First, only the Father, then Father and Son, then finally the Spirit. But they are not, in his view, one God or even parts of one God. Rather, the Father is the one God. He just manages to extend out some of his stuff, so that portions of it also compose two others. You can call them “divine” in his view in that they’re compose of a divine sort of matter.
I asked for specific passages in Tertullian in which (as Martinich alleges) he refers to co-regency, but you gave me book titles instead. I don’t deny that he discusses coregency, but I don’t recall reading it in him anywhere. Same with Gregory of Nazianzus. But supposing that both do make co-emperors an analogy for the triad (Tertullian) or the Trinity (G Naz), it’s not clear how that will support your view. G Naz will surely use analogies which he owns are wholly inadequate, so it’s not like his using an analogy should suggest that he’s adopting some literal model of the Trinity, i.e. suggesting an intelligible and arguably coherent reading of the standard language.
Thanks Dale,
You said: “This is why all *clear* statements in the NT about the Genesis creation credit the Father with doing it.”
Perhaps you could tell me which are these “clear” statements in the NT, according to you, which are exclusively crediting the Father with the Genesis creation?
Saves me from speculating as to what you have in mind.
Hi Dale,
“2. God = Trinity
It is self-evident that = (numerical identity) is transitive. Thus, if Jesus = God, and God = Trinity, it follows that:
3. Jesus = Trinity.
Is that a fair argument?
John 1 v 1 states that the Logos is God, i.e. God = Logos, so by your argument the Logos must be the trinity which is another absurdity.
You are using the words God and Trinity as synonyms here to get a false result, or?
I would say that the word God is more of a title, while Trinity is rather a way to designate a particular structural concept of God’s existence, for want of putting it better.
Do Unitarians have to argue in an underhand way?
Hi Paul – fair? 1-3 are indisputably a valid argument – that is, 1 and 2 together imply 3.
It’s an interesting question what John means by saying “god was the logos” – but I won’t take the time to explain my view here.
No, I am not using the words “God” and “Trinity” as synonyms. But in this argument, 2 is a premise which any trinitarian, as a trinitarian accepts. A trinitarian thinks that the one God just is the Trinity (and the Trinity just is the one God). Me, as a biblical unitarian, I think that 2 is not true. What’s true, in my view, is God = Father.
But the post is not about my views. It’s a problem for trinitarians to solve. They should, I think, deny 1. Do you agree?
Not sure what you think is tricky or underhanded here, Paul. Feel free to explain.
“It’s an interesting question what John means by saying “god was the logos” – but I won’t take the time to explain my view here.”
Hi Dale,
Thanks for interesting discussion.
But doesn’t John 1 v 1 plainly assert the complete numerical identity of the Logos with God, not just with some facets of his being?
How do you arrive at some kind of limitation of this numerical identity using the first chapter of John?
Aren’t you imposing your unitarian bias to rob the text of it’s plain meaning?
Hi Paul – the trinitarian should not want John 1 to assert the numerical identity of “God” in v. 1 (i.e. the Father) and the Logos who “was divine” or “was God.” Do you see why?
Think about Lady Wisdom, who is with God at the creation in Proverbs 8. Is that supposed to be God’s assistant? A goddess helper, brought forth by God before creation, there witnessing, maybe even helping with his creation? No, clearly. “She” is just a personification of his wisdom. In a sense she “is” him – all “she” amounts to is an essential property of his. “She” is not an additional being – it’s just God.
Here in John 1, the author is vividly personifying God’s “Word” by which he made all things, which is the light to our path, and which people have rejected, etc. But as he launches out on this theme, he warns us that although this was “with” God, still “*God* was the logos.” In other words, this is really just God – not someone in addition to God. Why did the author need to do this? Perhaps the views of Hellenists like Philo were in the back of his mind – Philo the Alexandrian Platonized Jew who posits God’s “Logos” as either a power or an intermediary through who God created.
In Jewish doctrine God (aka the Father) was the only creator, who needed no help and had no help. This is why all *clear* statements in the NT about the Genesis creation credit the Father with doing it. Once the cosmology of Plato’s Timaeus was brought in, this was turned on its head. It was thought that it was crucial that God didn’t create directly, but only through an intermediary – through this “second god,” the Logos.
“In Jewish doctrine God (aka the Father) was the only creator, who needed no help and had no help. This is why all *clear* statements in the NT about the Genesis creation credit the Father with doing it. Once the cosmology of Plato’s Timaeus was brought in, this was turned on its head. It was thought that it was crucial that God didn’t create directly, but only through an intermediary – through this “second god,” the Logos.”
Not according to this Jew: http://nes.berkeley.edu/Web_Boyarin/BoyarinArticles/108%20Gospel%20of%20the%20Memra%20(2001).pdf
“The lion’s share of the Hellenic thinking of early Christianity-and most centrally, Logos theology-was, however, an integral part of the first-century Jewish world… Rabbinic Judaism in its nativist attempt to separate itself from its own history of now “Christian” logos theology began to try to imagine itself a community free of Hellenism…”
I wonder if we can convince Dale to interview Daniel Boyarin and Peter Schafer on Trinities? I’d love to send some recommended questions for the interviewer:-)
My own preliminary and tentatively held view is that if one chooses to construe one or more of e.g. MEMRA, SOPHIA, LOGOS, etc., as a true second entity alongside God rather than as personifications, then this wouldn’t be incipient “binitarianism”, i.e. the second entity wouldn’t be both YHWH and distinct from YHWH as a “person of God” (whatever that would mean), but it would be a distinct power dependent on YHWH and who represents Him. This looks a lot more like Arianism than binitarianism.
I wonder how much later categories are influencing these scholars’ views? I also wonder if a desire to smooth relations between Christians and Jews may hover in the background of their subconscious?
I would pay money to listen in on a debate between Boyarin and Schafer. But I’m convinced by Boyarin. It seems to me like there has long been an unspoken dynamic going on in scholarly arguments about the origins of the doctrine of the Trinity that essentially says either (1) it’s a legitimate outgrowth of then-current Jewish thought (which was in some sense binitarian), (2) it’s a (basically Hegelian) synthesis of Jewish thought (which was really strictly unitarian) with pagan polytheism, or (3) it was divinely revealed. I think now the hegemony of the Hegalians is giving way to a more fact-based approach to early Christian studies that just doesn’t get confirmation out of the primary texts, and Trintiarian Christians are loving it. But up until now it’s just been a battle between Hegelian synthesis or divine revelation. Boyarin is upsetting a lot of folks. But I’m a Trinitarian, and I think he’s right. (And, it’s not just him, but the whole constellation of folks like Alan Segal, the Enoch seminar, Margaret Barker, Michael Heiser, yada yada yada.)
You wrote: “My own preliminary and tentatively held view is that if one chooses to construe one or more of e.g. MEMRA, SOPHIA, LOGOS, etc., as a true second entity alongside God rather than as personifications, then this wouldn’t be incipient “binitarianism”, i.e. the second entity wouldn’t be both YHWH and distinct from YHWH as a “person of God” (whatever that would mean), but it would be a distinct power dependent on YHWH and who represents Him. This looks a lot more like Arianism than binitarianism.”
It depends on what’s meant by “binitarian” and “trinitarian,” but could go either way. Classical Trinitarianism (e.g., Athanasius, the Cappadocians, etc.) defined “homoousios” as simply being “of the same species,” rather than the sort of quasi-modalist interpretation of the Trinity we see today (as you put it “both YHWH and distinct from YHWH”.) (See http://www.contramodalism.com , about 95% of which I agree with). So, if one sees the Memra as something that is a creature, and unlike God (the Father), then it would be Arian. But if someone saw the Memra as an “exact image” of the Father (that exists eternally, alongside the Father), then it would be orthodox.
My own view is that in several OT passages that were likely written quite early, YHWH is the Son of God, rather than God Himself (e.g., Psalm 89:6; Deuteronomy 32:8 — you can’t inherit something from yourself). Later this turns into talk about the “Word” and “Wisdom” of God, and then in the Targums we get the Memra.
Pretty clearly John accepts the Memra theology of the Targums. For one thing, he references the Targum of Isaiah, rather than the original in John 12:41 when he says that Isaiah “beheld His glory,” which is something that is never stated in the Hebrew Isaiah, but is how Isaiah 6:1 reads in the Aramaic. He also does the same thing the Targums do with the Memra, namely to make the Most High invisible, while the Memra / Logos is His visible representation (John 1:18; 6:46; 14:9).
And that, actually, is Nicene theology. It’s not what people today read back into the Nicenes / pro-Nicenes. But if you read the texts, this is what they actually defend.
“(2) it’s a (basically Hegelian) synthesis of Jewish thought (which was really strictly unitarian) with pagan polytheism…”
Perhaps one of the reasons #2 hangs on is because there are Church Fathers who explicitly tell us that’s what they did:
“For, in personality, the Spirit is one thing and the Word another, and yet again that from which the Word and Spirit is, another. But when you have gained the conception of what the distinction is in these, the oneness, again, of the nature admits not division, so that the supremacy of the one First Cause is not split and cut up into differing Godships, neither does the statement harmonize with the Jewish dogma, but the truth passes in the mean between these conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet accepting what is useful in it from each. The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Word, and by the belief in the Spirit; while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the nature abrogating this imagination of plurality.” (Gregory of Nyssa, see http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/205/2050223.htm)
But that isn’t what this text says.
The subject here is not Gregory, but “The Truth.” Gregory is just reiterating what was, at that time, an extremely popular trope. That the truth is always a mean (the so-called “Golden Mean”) between two extremes.
In this case, Gregory doesn’t say that *he* is combining the two. He says that “The Truth” is what “passes in the mean between” Judaism and paganism, but that “The Truth” (not Gregory) is what “accepts what is useful from each.”
Anyway, if you were deliberately falsifying the gospel… would you come right out and say it? (And if Gregory *had* said that was what he was doing, instead of saying what he actually said, it would have been the very speedy end of the orthodox party!)
Beau,
You may have misunderstood my post. Note again:
“For, in personality, the Spirit is one thing and the Word another, and yet again that from which the Word and Spirit is, another. But when you have gained the conception of what the distinction is in these, the oneness, again, of the nature admits not division, so that the supremacy of the one First Cause is not split and cut up into differing Godships, NEITHER DOES THE STATEMENT HARMONIZE WITH THE JEWISH DOGMA, but the truth passes in the mean between these conceptions, DESTROYING EACH HERESY…THE JEWISH DOGMA IS DESTROYED BY THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE WORD, AND BY THE BELIEF IN THE SPIRIT.” (Gregory of Nyssa, see http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/205/2050223.htm)
In other words, this and other church “Fathers” believed that the view the Jews held was “heresy” precisely because it was Unitarian in nature, not allowing for two or more Powers.
If Boyarin is right then Gregory of Nyssa was mistaken. But, again, his explicitly stated understanding of matters may account for why some still hold that the Trinity emerged via a synthesis between Jewish and pagan thought. He explicitly stated the synthesis.
Yes, I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are saying. 🙁
Beau,
“Yes, I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are saying. ?”
Sorry for causing confusion. I guess my second message really added a point that wasn’t in or obviously in the first message.
1. I wasn’t saying that Gregory of Nyssa was the initiator of the synthesis, but merely pointing out that by presenting it as the truth, he was promoting the idea. That’s what I meant by “that’s what they did”, i.e. they offered/promoted the synthesis.
2. Gregory of Nyssa’s words make it very clear that the Jewish monotheism with which he was familiar did not permit binitarianism or trinitarianism, because, if it did, then he wouldn’t have called it an ancient “heresy” that was “destroyed” by bringing in the Spirit and the Word, which would be a form of trinitarianism.
So, if Boyarin is correct, then Gregory of Nyssa was mistaken. If Boyarin is correct, then bringing in the Spirit and Word would not have “destroyed” the ancient dogma; it would have merely expressed it in a new way.
I think that Boyarin’s thesis has little chance of being made historically plausible. If all those ancient texts that seem to involve either divine agents or personifications are really speaking about an additional “person” or additional “persons” of God, then this would be clearer in the texts. Such a notion would have introduced the very paradox that theologians have struggled to understand and make sense of for about 2000 years! It seems rather unlikely that crowning obsession of the Christian church inspired neither comment nor concern from the ancients.
Hi Dale,
I am enjoying our discussion here and thanks for helping me to understand things from the unitarian perspective.
You said: “Hi Paul – the trinitarian should not want John 1 to assert the numerical identity of “God” in v. 1 (i.e. the Father) and the Logos who “was divine” or “was God.” Do you see why?”
But why should my preferences be of any significance? Either the text asserts the complete numerical identity of God with the Logos or it doesn’t.
My understanding of the text in english as given in the kjv is that the Logos is unreservedly numerically identified with God.
Do you see it otherwise? Maybe this is what you “should not want” for some reason?
Hi Paul,
“My understanding of the text in english as given in the kjv is that the Logos is unreservedly numerically identified with God.”
Remind me, are you a KJV Onlyist?
You could say so.
Thanks for confirming, Paul. For me, it doesn’t matter what the KJV says; it only matters what the Greek says, and it doesn’t read like the KJV.
“My understanding of the text in english as given in the kjv is that the Logos is unreservedly numerically identified with God.”
Identified “with God” or “as God”?
If you mean “with God” then I think you need to unpack that a little, because I’m not sure what that would mean.
If you mean “as God”, then, IMO, this should be acceptable to Unitarians, Arians, and Trinitarians. The Prologue is poetic in character, and it shouldn’t surprise us to find paradox in poetry.
Hi Sean,
“For me, it doesn’t matter what the KJV says; it only matters what the Greek says, and it doesn’t read like the KJV.”
For me that’s where the slippery slope starts, “yea hath God said”.
I don’t believe the translators made any mistakes.
“Identified “with God” or “as God”? ”
With God is what I wrote and what I meant. Isn’t that what the text means? Doesn’t the text imply that the Word is identical to God. Do I have to understand the implications or just believe what the text says? Why do Unitarians have a problem with this?
Hi Paul,
“With God is what I wrote and what I meant. Isn’t that what the text means? Doesn’t the text imply that the Word is identical to God. Do I have to understand the implications or just believe what the text says? Why do Unitarians have a problem with this?”
Well, you say that “with God” is what you wrote and what you meant, but when you explain what it means you employ a definition that is compatible with “as God”.
As I said, you need to unpack that, because “identified with God” is ambiguous. I still don’t know what you think the text means.
Dale,
It’s unlikely that “the word was with God” was intended to suggest any kind of personification or attribute. PROS TON QEON is directional and not reflexive or possessive. This prepositional phrase occurs often in scripture and is never used with the implication some biblical unitarians are trying to give it.
Whenever PROS TON QEON occurs in the Greek scriptures (over 100 times), it always involves another person who is relating to God (who is another person). There is no reason to make an exception to this in John 1:1.
Although some biblical unitarians cite various “wisdom” passages in order to try to substantiate that an abstract plan or attribute was “with God” himself, all of those passages use other Greek grammar to express that implication (and not PROS or PROS TON QEON).
Rivers 🙂
Rivers,
What kind of software did you use to determine that PROS TON QEON occurs in the Greek Scriptures over 100 times? I could use some good search software:-)
The trinitarian in the dialogue at the head of this post now says:
“Jesus is YHWH” is a short way of saying “Jesus is YHWH in the person of the Son.”
If I understand him, he concedes the validity of the argument, and the truth of 2, but he does not want to agree with 3. Hence, he’s denying 1 – but not for the reason discussed in the post (that 1 should be read as meaning “Jesus is divine”). Rather, because it is not 1 which is true, but rather the statement just quoted. For convenience, let me give it a number:
4. “Jesus is YHWH in the person of the Son.”
I’m now scratching my head, wondering what “in the person of the Son” is doing in 4. Evidently, it is modifying the name “YHWH.” The author has left the “is of identity” intact, I take it. But he wants to say that it is not YHWH (full stop) that is numerically identical to Jesus, but rather, “YHWH in the person of the Son.”
Note that if 4 entails 1, the game is lost. IF that’s so, then he’s still committed to the soundness of the argument. If “YHWH in the person of the Son” is the same entity/being/individual reality as YHWH, then 4 entails 1.
Thus the author must mean “YHWH in the person of the Son” to name a different individual entity than does “YHWH” (unmodified by the added clause). This makes sense, as he wants to say that the one God is triune, but deny that Jesus is triune. So in his view there is YHWH, who is triune, and “YHWH in the person of the Son” – but this is just a roundabout way of saying, “the Son,” i.e. a “Person” within the Trinity. So then, the Son is *not* numerically the same as the one God (1 is false), but rather, he is something within the one God, also to be called “YHWH.”
But why the “in”? Perhaps his idea is that we can encounter a whole by (“in”) one of its parts?
Is, then, he saying more than than Jesus is a part of the one God, and should be called “YHWH”?
I think the escape works, logically speaking: 4, 2, and 3 do not make a valid argument. “Jesus is God” would be a misleading way of saying that Jesus is a part of God which can be called “YHWH,” or all that plus that Jesus is divine. I would suggest then that one who holds this theology not say “Jesus is God” unless they immediately explain the odd things they mean by that.
One should still ask, of course, does the Bible anywhere teach, explicitly or by implication, that the one God is the Trinity, or that Jesus is a part of the one God?
Hi Dale,
1. In the case of pure synchronic identity, my answer is no. Jesus is not the Trinity.
2. In the case of impure synchronic identity, my answer is yes. Jesus is identical to the Trinity. For example, (https://philpapers.org/post/18954).
Pax,
Jim
I have read your article James. I’m sorry, but it shows some serious confusions, not only about conditional vs. biconditional statements, but about identity, the indiscernibility of identicals vs. the identity of indiscernibles, and other things. I’m surprised that JAT published it in this form. If I refereed it, I would have had a LOT of critical feedback on it. It would have been at best a revise and resubmit with some heavy revisions demanded. I don’t get quite how it is supposed to synthesize RT and ST. Most puzzling, perhaps, are your contentions that “the proprietor is identical to the proprietorship,” (p. 133) and that one of the three-co-emperors should be thought to be “identical to the triumvirate.” (p. 134) It’s not clear that you have in mind anything like a concept of numerical sameness in either case. About Tertullian, there is nothing trinitarian about his anti-monarchian argument that refers to one king ruling through others. (pp. 143-4) Notice that there is no clear reference to co-regency in what you quote – I don’t remember that Martinich does more than guess about that either… Tertullian’s main analogy there is really a King and his prince. In any case, Tertullian thinks the one God is the Father, and that this one God existed before the Logos and the Spirit did, two other and lesser beings who are formed of lesser portions of his material substance. I’ve written and presented on this in several places, giving the relevant quotes from Tertullian.
Hi Dale,
Thank you for looking into my paper.
I’m sorry, but what you find most puzzling indicates that you did not catch the implications of impure numerical identity and the main point of my paper. For example, page 137 clearly states that *impure relative identity* (RI) and *impure numerical identity* (NI) are synonymous terms.
Also, you wrote, “Most puzzling, perhaps, are your contentions that ‘the proprietor is identical to the proprietorship,’ (p. 133) and that one of the three-co-emperors should be thought to be ‘identical to the triumvirate.’ (p. 134) It’s not clear that you have in mind anything like a concept of numerical sameness in either case.”
However, I clearly explained that the identicalness is not pure numerical sameness but impure RI or also impure NI, which are one and the same. Indeed, I did not describe the standard concept of numerical sameness in either case. You are correct on that. For example, the identicalness of any triumvir to the triumvirate is impure RI. For example, Van Inwagen (2011) “And yet they are not three Gods but one God” also uses an impure RI position of the Trinity, which you note in your SEP paper.
I suppose you’ll have a better understanding of my paper and Van Inwagen’s after you have a better understanding of impure RI.
Per Tertullian, he distinguished between co-emperors and a regent appointed by an emperor. I never saw you correctly describe that while discussing Tertullian. Also, I will write about Tertullian’s view of emperorship in the future.
In my view, impure numerical identity is just another scam in trying to make sense of a simple biblical truth. Jesus the Christ is the Son of God, not God. The Father is ho theos. Up to this point I have never had anyone show me scripturally where to find such ideas. The same goes for Swinburne’s arguments and Social Trinitarianism. They can’t be substantiated with biblical teachings. Of course the language sounds academic and terms are infused that are biblical yet when you look at the substance you see that you are always speaking of different selves, different wills, different minds and different beings. There is no consubstantial union in three beings found in the Scriptures. When Theos is mentioned in the biblical text what does this mean? Does it mean the Trinity? I don’t think you would want to do that. I can’t think of one scripture that identifies the One God or monos theos as anyone but the Father.Of course, John 17.3 is a great text where Jesus in prayer calls his Father the monon theon alethinon.
James,
Rea introduces the terms “pure” and “impure” in this discussion, but what are those are *theories*. A “pure” relative identity theory tries to do without any absolute concept of identity. Indeed, Geach, absurdly, claims that such an idea is unintelligible. An “impure” theory allows for the reality of both absolute and relative identity relations, where the latter are not reducible to (analyzable in terms of) the former.
Now you come along and talk about “pure” and “impure” relations of numerical sameness. I draw a total blank there. The concept of numerical identity, in my view, is basic, and does not come in various kinds. I understand the concept of relative id, but I think it is analyzable in terms of identity – as I say in the SEP piece (and this is standard, not unique to me) – to say that A and B are the same F means that A is an F and B is an F and A=B.
“the identicalness of any triumvir to the triumvirate is impure RI”
The one of three emperors – and “the triumvirate.” They are the same what, in your view? E.g. Bush Jr. and Dubya are the same man, the same president, the same Texan. So in your view, Emperor Gaius (or whoever) is the same ____ as the triumvirate. Please fill in the blank.
Tertullian was not a trinitarian. Thus, I doubt that he ever makes any emperor analogy which is relevant to any Trinity theory, Relative-Id or otherwise. If you disagree, please supply the passage(s) in question and we’ll examine them.
Hi Dale,
First, I add that a correct understanding of impure RI described in my paper is an important prerequisite for understanding the synthesis RT and ST.
Second, I add that I agree with you that Tertullian proposed that the Father pre-existed the Son. I did not focus on that in this paper while I focused more on Gregory the Theologian’s analogy of a co-regency with unity of mind and no beginning.
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