I’m pretty sure that if I said “The sky is blue” Steve Hays would jump up and yell, “No it’s not, you stupid apostate! And what do you even mean by ‘blue’ anyway?”
In response to my claim that for the ancient Jews God is alive,
This is one of Tuggy’s trademark equivocations. That’s his modus operandi.
Hoo haw – yeah, I’m sneaky!
Yes, Bible writers say God is the “living” God. That stands in contract to the idols and nonexistent deities of paganism. But that hardly means “alive” in the sense that alive is an antonym for “dead”, where “alive” and “dead” mean biological life and biological death.
Evidently it’s hard to Steve to grasp that there is a more general concept of life than the more specific concept of biological life. God’s being alive does rule out his being dead. There is no biological claim here. It seems I’ve dazzled him with my super-trickiness:
Tuggy imagines that ancient Jews thought God had life-functions and life-processes? What is that even supposed to mean? A divine metabolism?
Let’s see, what might God’s life consist in? Knowing. Loving. Answering prayers. Upholding the cosmos in existence. Communicating with humans. Providentially arranging things. Got to be alive to do such things. No, these don’t require having, e.g. a large intestine or a stomach.
[Dale:] Nope. What died is Methuselah, the human person. The dier is not at issue; it’s him. Yes, this will understood to have different implications on different views of human persons.
Tuggy is simply reiterating his equivocation. Sure, we can say the decedent is Methuselah. But if we wish to be philosophically precise about what died, that’s specific to his body, and not to Methuselah in every respect.
No, when a human person dies, we don’t only say that. We also think that the human person himself died, and not only his body. This is obvious, and doesn’t need arguing for. Clearly, a theoretical commitment is getting in the way of his seeing this as obvious. That’s a serious danger of theories!
…according to Tuggy’s own definition, the soul didn’t lose all or most of its normal life processes, so if Bob is a composite being, and death involves the separation of soul from body, then it’s philosophically inaccurate to say “Bob died”.
We’re assuming a dualism on which Bob = a certain soul, or else Bob = soul+body but only the soul is essential to Bob. The soul then (aka Bob) did lose most of its normal life processes, which involve the body.
Dale: So contrary to scriptural teaching and common sense, you’re asserting that all humans are always immortal.
…there is a sense in which all humans are always immortal. That’s not contrary to scriptural teaching and common sense if we bother to define our terms.
Do tell.
Dale: Sure, even if the soul is immortal, the body may rot and fall apart. But it does not die a human death, the death of a human self – not on dualism, which we’re assuming.
…Tuggy seems to be saying the body doesn’t die a human death (rather than the soul). And what reason is there to accept his denial?
There is only one who died a human death, e.g. when Lincoln died: the man Abraham Lincoln. On dualism, his body is a different thing, if it is a thing. So on dualism, his body did not also die a human death. His cells and organs of course died too; they lose all of their normal life-functions.
Dale: I note in passing that this requires the natures to be concrete beings. Abstracta can neither die nor be alive.
Steve: I already anticipated that objection in my initial response… when I carefully defined my terms: Human nature isn’t something a human being is [i.e. a concrete reality], but has [i.e. an abstract reality].
Instead of realizing that he’s committed to Christ’s “human nature” being both an abstract and a concrete thing (so, not abstract – D’oh!), Hays turns to his habitual abuse:
Is Tuggy too addlebrained to keep track of what I said? If he’s going to interact with my position, is it asking too much to pay attention to what I actually said?
LOL. Yeah, I guess I’m pretty addlebrained. When I’m not being super-tricky.
Dale: “Jesus died” is a claim about Jesus. In effect, the view you’re suggesting is just denying that Jesus died. Not the NT view of course.
Steve: Sure, “Jesus died”. But the question is how to unpack that claim, given substance dualism as well as the hypostatic union. A two-word phrase is hardly exhaustive.
Ye olde switcheroo here. It’s a core claim of the gospel that Jesus died. This is not the weaker claim that “Jesus died” is true. The appeal of this latter is that, it is hoped, it can be true without Jesus having died. Mr. Hayes is, between his cute little fits of abuse, offering a version of the death-substitution strategy.
Finally, Hays face-plants on one of my logical analyses of the triad:
i) All J are D. (All things which are Jesus are things which have died.)
ii) All J are F. (All things which are Jesus are things which are fully divine.)
iii) No F is D. (No thing which is fully divine is a thing which has died.)
(i) is false. All things which are Jesus include his immortal soul and his divine nature. Those things never died. Those things are incapable of dying.
There can be only one thing which “is” Jesus in the sense which is meant. Remember: this was an analysis of “Jesus died.” But it is clear enough, finally, that he’s denying that Jesus died.
(ii) is false. All things which are Jesus include his human body and human soul. Those are not divine.
This is supposed to be an analysis of “Jesus is fully divine” – a claim about just one thing. He wants to read it is “All things which are in some sense parts of Jesus…” But the sophomoric mistakes keep coming:
“All things” which are Jesus comprise disparate things. Not all of a kind. Neither death nor divinity are true of “all things” that are Jesus, but only some things that are Jesus. A subset of “things” that are Jesus.
In (iii), notice Tuggy’s illicit slide from “all things” to “a thing” (or “no thing”). He abruptly collapses a plurality of things into a singular thing. Tuggy is addicted to systematic equivocations.
Right. I’ll have to watch that. Thanks for the advice.
