flailing against the New Testament – part 1

At triablogue, Steve Hays tries his hand at refuting the brief arguments in these three videos.

As is typical with him, he leads with childish abuse; this is because of the weakness of his replies. As usual, I delete a lot of verbiage that is not to the point.

1. God cannot die. An obtuse objection to the Incarnation. If Jesus just is God, then Jesus can’t die. But of course, that’s not the Trinitarian position. Rather, Jesus is a composite individual: the divine Son in union with a human soul and human body. So Jesus vis-a-vis his body can die.

Of course, the argument doesn’t ignore “two natures” speculations about Jesus. It’s just that they don’t help, given that Jesus is fully divine and that this entails essential immortality. Hays’s reply is empty of content: if “dying vis-a-vis his body” entails dying, then the problem remains: an essentially immortal being can’t die. If “dying vis-a-vis his body” doesn’t entail dying, well, I don’t know what it means!

At any rate, the New Testament is clear that Jesus died.

3. Unless you’re a hypostatic union–a composite of two natures–Trinitarian the resurrection offers no hope for you. That’s hard to respond to because it’s not an argument. It’s unclear what the claim amounts to.

Happy to help! The catholic position is that the one Christ – the one with two natures – is “man but not a man.” That is, “man” is predicable of him, because there is an anhypostatic “human nature” in there, but he is not a human person, a human being, a human self. (Why? Because there’s already a divine self in the theory, and two selves is clearly too many.) But, you and I are human persons. But then, on the catholic theory, Jesus’s resurrection is not an example of a human person being resurrected to eternal life! And yet, the New Testament cites Jesus’s case as showing that there’s hope for you and me.

4. Jesus can’t be a mediator between God and man if he is God. The video keeps repeating the same blunder. If Jesus just is God, then he can’t play mediator between God and man. But once again, that’s a straw man.

Again, the alleged “blunder” is that we just don’t know about two-natures speculations. LOL. Many will say that Jesus is God himself. But then, just conceptually, he can’t be a mediator between God and humans. A mediator is necessarily a third party – he can’t be either of the parties. I go into this objection at some length in my debate book with Chris Date, with him pushing back. But it’s a purely conceptual point; it holds up, and should guide our reading of the sources.

5. A God-man can’t be tempted and so can’t overcome sin–because he was made in every way like his brothers. 1) That does raise some theologically significant issues. I’ve discussed this objection on several occasions.

Dear reader, out of mercy, I omit his links here. Needless to say, he can’t answer the difficulty. He probably wants to say that Jesus really couldn’t be tempted, on the grounds that Jesus is God and so is essentially impeccable (in principle incapable of sin). Again, he’s in the teeth of the New Testament here, which is clear in its teaching that Jesus was tempted to sin, and yet passed all tests.

Not having an answer, he tries to go on the attack:

The unitarian alternative fails to explain what makes Jesus sinless.

Not sure why we should believe that! At any rate, it’s irrelevant to the argument at hand.

6. A God-man can’t ask God to bypass the cup because he’d already knows the answer 
1) In a two-minds Christology, the human mind of Jesus is not omniscient.
2) In addition, it’s psychologically possible (indeed, commonplace) to know your duty but be emotionally conflicted about your duty and wish to avoid an especially onerous obligation. And keep in mind that this was a voluntary mission. A self-imposed duty. The Son had no absolute obligation to save sinners. 

Two swings, two misses! Even if we accept a “two minds” speculation, it would remain that he has a divine mind, by or in which he knows all with certainty – and, so could not ask God to be excused. One can’t even form an intention to ask someone to help one to avoid something which one knows with certainty to be inevitable.

He second point just ignores that Jesus, if divine, would know with certainty what was about to happen (on a traditional view of divine foreknowledge like Hays and many others accept). Even on an open theist view of providence, still, a divine Jesus would with certainty know God’s will, and again, would not be able to ask, knowing that he’d be turned down – he’d know that this was non-negotiable.

7. A God-man can’t authentically overcome to succeed where Adam failed. Only a human Jesus can set the example. 1) This assumes the primary role of Jesus is to set an example.

Why would one think this?

2) Salvation isn’t a contest between evenly-matched contenders.

True, yet irrelevant.

The difficulty remains: an all-powerful, all-knowing, impeccable Jesus doesn’t seem like he’d be a helpful example for you and me to follow, because we’re not like that!

8. Different versions of the Trinity. True, and there are different models of unitarianism. A unitarian can be an Arian, Socinian, deist, Molinist, open theist, fatalist, predestinarian, Muslim, Rabbinic Jew, or goddess worshiper. 

Painful point-missing here. “The Trinity” is traditional language which gets parsed in various, very different and largely incompatible ways. That’s why it’s not one theory, one theology. Rather, “the Trinity” is a herd of jostling, competing theories, each of which is supposed to tell you just what the big catholic insight about the one God is. This ought to cast doubt on the notion that God has revealed “the Trinity” to the Church.

Unitarian theology is that the Father alone is identical to the one God. This doesn’t become a different claim when it is paired, say, with “Arian” or with “Socinian” associated theses. Neither does, say, a Swinburnean view of “the Trinity” become a different claim when paired with Molinism, Open Theism, or Calvinism, etc.

So far, our would-be defender of catholic orthodoxy hasn’t really made a single important and true point! But maybe in the latter portion of his critique, he can achieve the thrill of victory, and avoid the agony of defeat?