Let’s analyze some arguments:
:55 Note the original post: everything thing it says is true. And the subject is “the” doctrine of the Trinity.
1:04 “Is he telling me that Jesus isn’t God?” Notice the switch of subject, from what on the face of it is not in the Bible and what is actually very hard to argue is in the Bible, to “the deity of Christ,” which our apologist friend here thinks can easily be proof-texted. In a lot of evangelicals’ minds, there’s not a big difference between “the Trinity” and “the deity of Christ.” But this is a serious mistake, as I explain in my book What is the Trinity?
1:12 “that Jesus is God” is “a fundamental tenet of the Christian faith.” Says who? In Acts, the gospel is preached multiple times, to great success, and yet it is never mentioned that “Jesus is God.” To the contrary, Jesus is taught to be God’s Messiah, a man (Acts 2:22, Acts 17:31). Like too many, our apologist merely assumes that “Jesus is God” is an essential teaching, without which there simply is no Christianity.
1:37 We’re told that Tatum has posted three hours worth of arguments that Jesus isn’t God but rather a man. A very short sample is given, but we must merely guess at what these long arguments were.
2:05 Then our apologist gives this sin argument:
- All mere humans have sinned. (Premise from Romans 3:23)
- If Jesus was a mere human, he would have sinned. (1)
- If Jesus had sinned, he couldn’t be an atoning sacrifice for the sins of humanity. (Premise)
- But Jesus was able to be an atoning sacrifice for the sins of humanity. (Premise)
- Therefore, Jesus was not a mere human.
A unitarian Christians will simply deny premise 1. For one thing, that’s not what Romans 3:23 says. The point there is really that people generally, whether Jew or Gentile, have sinned, but thank God (v. 24) they can be saved through Jesus.
2:22 Next, this atonement argument:
- If Jesus were not fully divine, his atoning death would not have been valuable enough to atone for all the sins of humankind.
- Jesus’s death was valuable enough to atone for all the sins of human kind.
- Therefore, Jesus was fully divine.
Here, a unitarian Christian will deny 1. Premise 1 here is not taught in any part of Scripture, and is in fact due to the speculations of medieval philosopher-theologian-bishop Anselm. Explicit New Testament teaching is that Jesus is a man, and that he was a sacrifice acceptable to God.
2:39 Yes, the Bible – the unending fountain of unitarian Christian arguments.
3:20 Diagnosis: Tatum hasn’t studied the Bible enough. Comment: tidy little assumption.
3:24 Tatum argues that Jesus, while dead, would not be able to resurrect himself. God, someone else, resurrected him.
Comment: It’s unclear why he thinks that Jesus, while dead, would not be able to bring himself back to bodily life. Perhaps he assumes that death is annihilation, that it involves ceasing to exist. Or perhaps he is a physicalist about human persons, who thinks that when dead, a human either doesn’t exist or at least can’t do anything because he doesn’t while dead have a functioning brain. Of course, one might be a dualist and think that a lack of a working brain would incapacitate the dead person. At any rate, Tatum is right about this: the clear and repeated message of the New Testament is that God (aka “the Father”) raised Jesus from the dead.
3:50 But instead of going with regular, clear, repeated NT teaching, our apologist reaches for the one verse that at first glance sounds like Jesus raised himself from the dead: John 2:19-22. First, note that the passage seems to say, by using the passive, that Jesus was raised from the dead by God (v. 22). So who is this passage saying caused Jesus to be alive again? Jesus? God? Both in cooperation? Both because they’re actually one and the same? (Our apologist, it seems, thinks this last is obviously the right answer.)
The last, though, is a non-starter. This gospel doesn’t confuse together God and Jesus. Like the rest of the New Testament, it assumes them to differ from one another in various ways. About John 2, one interpretation is: only God is said to raise Jesus here, because Jesus is prophesying, as prophets are wont to do, in the voice of God, speaking first-person for God. That would reconcile this text with normal New Testament teaching about who raised Jesus. Another option: in one sense, God raises Jesus, but in another sense, Jesus raises Jesus. God “raises” him in the sense of bringing him back to life, while Jesus then “raises” himself by literally getting up from where they laid him in the tomb. They knocked down the temple (i.e. killed Jesus by wrecking his body) but Jesus raised his body back up, thanks to God’s resurrecting him. Finally, one may suppose, if one holds that Jesus, while a dead human, would be capable of action, that Jesus somehow cooperated with God in his own resurrection, God somehow doing it through him. Then, the other New Testament sayings would be correct, in crediting God with raising Jesus; they would just be leaving out that Jesus, while dead, somehow participated. Any of these three interpretations seems better than confusing Jesus together with his and our God (John 20:17).
4:22 Tatum says that no part of Scripture “calls Jesus God.” We must separate here two things which he might have in mind. First, he may mean that no part of Scripture teaches Jesus to be none other than the one God himself. That is true!
Second, Tatum may mean that no Scripture applies a Hebrew or Greek word we translate as “God” to Jesus. I would say that this position can be argued, although I’m inclined to think it is not true. But as we know from the New Testament – see John 10:34-35 and Hebrews 1:8-9 and 2 Corinthians 4:4 – beings other than God can sometimes, for various reasons, be described or addressed as “God” or as “gods.” Given this, pointing out Jesus being called “God” doesn’t really answer the question, especially since we must consider all relevant Scriptural teachings.
4:28 But Thomas calls Jesus “my Lord and my God.” Other apologists pound the table here that both things are said to Jesus. Quite correct. Of course, in the context of John we may think that the point is, as our friend Kermit Zarley argues, that Thomas finally can see that God is “in” Christ. Or it could be that Thomas is calling Jesus his “God” but he means the sort of “God” that can be under the one God, as in Hebrews 1:8.
4:37 Titus 2:13 calls Jesus “our Great God”. It’s really not honest to just put this out here as if this were a clear example of Jesus being called “God.” E.g. see this blog post. At any rate, why is our apologist ignoring clear New Testament statements about who the one true God is? (e.g. John 17:1-3, 1 Timothy 2:5, John 5:44)
4:48 Romans 9:5 calls Christ “God over all.” Again, it’s not honest just to put this out there as a clear case, e.g. see this blog post. Hmm… I wonder what Paul’s clear and explicit doctrine is about who the one God is?
5:01 Jesus does things only God can do, such as
- forgiving sin (Nope!)
- other things
Comment: not too convincing, is it? Also, note that the New Testament is clear that Jesus does some things which God can’t do, such as (1) be tempted, (2) die, (3) be the mediator between God and us.
5:06 names (i.e. titles) normally reserved for God are applied to Jesus. Comment: true, but as we all know, titles and even proper names can be ambiguous, can refer to various ones. For example, importantly, “Lord.”
5:10 Pretty clear then, our apologist concludes, that Jesus in the New Testament and others there believe him to be God. Comment: not clear at all. Don’t rest the case on such flimsy reasons, especially when one hasn’t considered arguments that Jesus teaches himself to be someone other than God, and a man.
5:14 John 1 teaches Jesus is the same self as “the light.” Comment: unclear! It doesn’t say that, although there is a long-popular way of reading this text that way, wherein “the Word” is supposed to be the pre-human Jesus. I think that’s mistaken; it’s a long story why, but see here, here, and here. In this context we should just notice that our apologist again wants to rest everything on a less clear yet beloved text, avoiding dealing with more numerous and clearer texts.
5:20 Tatum argues that “the light” here and “the Word” should be understood as an “it,” not as a person/self, and so John 1 should not refer to this as “he.” Comment: I assume he’s been influenced here by the word of Sir Anthony Buzzard, e.g. this. I disagree about the translation claim, as I think the Word is being personified here, as with God’s Wisdom in Proverbs 8, and this is a natural way to take the Greek text here.
5:25 He uncharitably interprets Tatum as arguing that nothing truly described using a word which normally refers to a non-person can be literally a self/person. (Or perhaps just: John never describes persons using terms that when used literally refer to non-persons.) But that’s a silly claim, which would imply that the opposite of personification is impossible. Of course, it isn’t; we can say things like “Grandma was my rock; she helped so much through my troubles.” But this doesn’t really help us with John 1.
6:15 Jesus claims to be “I am” in John 8:58, meaning that he is God (because of Deuteronomy 32:32 and Isaiah 43:10). Tatum says that Jesus here just means that his “is more important than” Abraham. Comment: I think we need to think carefully here about the argument in the passage and about the potential meanings of the Greek ego eimi – see here.
6:48 Tatum argues that if you look at what Jesus is accused of by his Jewish opponents in the gospels, they never accuse him of claiming to be God himself. This is almost correct, I would say. What’s true is that when it comes to Jesus’s trials, his opponents don’t even try to pin this charge on him: that he claimed to be God. (Just look carefully at their charges: Matthew 26:57-68; Matthew 27:11-31; Mark 14:53-15:20; Luke 22:66-23:25; John 18:19-19:16). But surely they would have done so, if that had been his clear, public teaching. This is a very important piece of evidence re: what Jesus taught about himself.
7:18 But our apologist unwisely repeats the hostile Jews’ mistake, thinking that Jesus was claiming to have seen Abraham (John 10:33) and implausibly asserts that in John 8:58 Jesus is “claiming to be the ‘I am.'” They want to stone him because he is claiming to be God (John 10:33). Comment: Keep reading! That is the conclusion these blind, hostile opponents jump to, but that is not Jesus’s actual claim, as is clear from his correction at John 10:36. Jesus is our teacher about Jesus, right? Not his comically clueless opponents in this book! But our apologist cites these as the ones who really “get” what Jesus is teaching. :-/
In sum, if these enemies are not mistaken, if Jesus was claiming to be God himself, then it is shocking and inexplicable that no one comes forward at his trials to pillory him for that claim. Point Tatum.
8:30 Our apologist delivers up this lame little argument:
- It can truly be said of God that he is “first” and that he is “last.” (Isaiah 44:6)
- It can truly be said of Jesus that he is “first and last.” (Revelation 1:8)
- Therefore, God just is Jesus (they are numerically one).
Comment: the argument is invalid. 1 and 2 do not imply 3. That is to say, 1 and 2 could be true even though 3 is false. Do you see how?
9:30 John 5:22 – Father doesn’t judge but has entrusted all judgment to the Son. Comment: which shows that for John, Jesus isn’t God himself, as surely God himself never has got his right to judge from anyone. Conveniently, he ignores Acts 17:32. He does quote Matthew 5:27, but that verse clearly presupposes that Jesus and God are two.
10:20 Revelation 22:12-13 the speaker is clearly God, but then we find in v. 20 that it’s Jesus who has been speaking all along. Comment: Right, v. 20 tells us that the speaker at 22:12-13 is Jesus, not God. We should not think that our author confuses together what he’s so carefully distinguished in all the rest of this book. It would seem here that our apologist is misreading the passage because of his false assumption that only God can truly be called all of these: “first,” “last,” “alpha,” “omega,” “beginning,” “end”).
10:40 “the concept of the Trinity is taught literally all over the Bible” A blatant falsehood if “the Trinity” has to do with the idea of a triune or tripersonal God. True, if “Trinity” here is taken in its plural referring sense, meaning just these: God, his spirit, and his Son. Those, one can say, are taught about throughout the Bible. But then, Tatum wouldn’t deny that. So the apologist’s point is either patently false or it is true but something all Christians, even unitarian Christians, agree on.
10:45 Ignoring actual Old Testament specialists, our apologist cites his friend Anthony Rogers, specifically his fringe view that the Old Testament actually teaches the Trinity.
11:10 How can anyone understand the Bible without “the Trinity”? The question shows that our apologist has mostly only heard the catholic side of the exegetical debates. Actually, clear biblical teaching rules out any Trinity theory, so in rejecting Trinity theories we are not losing any precious key to understanding New Testament theology. To the contrary, it is free of any triune God idea. See, e.g. this helpful postage-stamp summary of New Testament teaching on God, his Son, and his spirit.
11:18 The old apologetics chestnut: the word “Trinity” isn’t in the Bible, but the idea is. And we can’t infer that the idea isn’t there, just because the word isn’t there. Comment: That last statement is true, and yet, the idea is simply not there, as I have argued here, here, and here.
11:30 Absurdly, our apologist claims that all it takes to show that the New Testament teaches the Trinity is to show that not only is the Father called “God,” but at least once, so is the Son and the Spirit. Big mistake; see here for why. TL;DNR version: such would be compatible with those authors being non-trinitarian in their views.
11:49 ALL the New Testament authors claim that Jesus is God. (Again: just is God himself? or: is called “God”?)
12:10 If you study your Bible enough, you will be able to see, like “the Jews” did, that Jesus was claiming to be God. Comment: more, better study leads one to see that Scripture authors never confuse together Jesus with his God, but teach him rather to be God’s human Son, his Messiah, even a model of faith in God (again, something God himself can’t do).
Our apologist ends by recommending a great defense of “the Trinity” by himself and a certain disreputable apologist and another guy.
To summarize: these are shallow, often-recycled apologists’ arguments, which should not convince anyone to confuse together what Scripture so clearly distinguishes between. Mr. Tatum should stick to his guns, even while honing his arguments.
