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Over at Biola’s alumni magazine, Winter 2011 issue, theologian Fred Sanders has a piece in which he argues,
The Trinity is a biblical doctrine, but let’s admit it: There’s something annoying about how hard it is to put your finger on a verse that states the whole doctrine.
The Bible presents the elements of the doctrine in numerous passages, of course: that there is only one God; that the Father is God; that the Son is God; and that the Spirit is God. We can also tell easily enough that the Father, Son and Spirit are really distinct from one another, and are not just three names for one person. If you hold all those clear teachings of Scripture in your mind at one time and think through them together, the doctrine of the Trinity is inevitable. Trinitarianism is a biblical doctrine and all the ingredients are given to us there: Just add thought and you have the classic doctrine. (emphases added)
Hmmm…. I would have thought that the elements of “the” doctrine included that the three are same substance or essence (homoousios). And that the there are co-equal, and co-eternal, uncreated, though the Father timelessly generates the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from him (or if you’re Western/Latin – from both Father and Son). Maybe something about their having one “divine nature” as well.
It isn’t that Sanders is unaware of any of this; he’s aware of all of it. It’s just, he’s writing in a popular, devotional vein, and so he’s sticking to what, in his view, the Bible straight up teaches, and to what is edifying to the average pew-dweller, or at least, to the average Biola alumnus. This is kind of standard, for conservative theologians to not mention the confusing stuff when dealing with non-scholars.
But it strikes me that his approach is typical of American evangelicalism generally. Most evangelicals don’t really care (or really, know) about creedal or theologically precise Trinity doctrines. (Hence, efforts like this.) They think of “the” Trinity doctrine as just the all-important claim of “the divinity of Christ“, plus a bit more (i.e. same claim, whatever it is, for the Holy Spirit). It’s really the “divinity of Christ” / aka the claim that “Jesus is God” which is the focus in evangelical spirituality, in its preaching, in its pop theology. (Notice, that’s not really a historical, creedal Incarnation doctrine. Yes, for evangelicals he’s both God and a man, but they’re not too hip on discoursing on the two natures or the hypostatic union, and so on.)
Back to the Trinity, all Sanders adds really, to this standard way of thinking is that this doctrine is not supposed to be some sort of modalism (e.g. one divine person who lives or appears in three different ways). This is an important caveat, for I think that many understand by “Jesus is God” that Jesus and God are one and the same, i.e. numerically one. And Jesus is a person, and God is a person (that is, a self), so they must be the same person (i.e. Jesus is God himself). Of course, when you say that “the” doctrine doesn’t mean that, it’s pretty unclear what it means. Like those Dallas Theological Seminary guys, Sanders’s approach leaves you scratching your head.
There are, of course, exceptions to this, among evangelical theologians and philosophers. But here at least, Sanders is adopting the common approach. He’s assuming, correctly, that what he says above is compatible with what various evangelical intellectuals think, e.g. “social” trinitarians. Problem is, thanks to that wonderfully ambiguous word “is”, it’s compatible with just about any Christian theology.
In Sanders’s view, the virtue of this doctrine not being in one verse is that it is instead “a massive, comprehensive, full-Bible doctrine that serves to expand our minds as readers of Scripture.”
Sweet! How does that work?
After quoting a few passages in which the three are mentioned, Sanders says that “entire books of the Bible are structured by the same Trinitarian logic“. No, he’s not really talking about logic here. His idea is that you can see a pattern of the Three, in some sense working together; you see a co-operation of three agents.
In Galatians, for example, Paul proves his gospel of faith against salvation by works in a three-part argument: The Galatians received the Spirit by faith, God promised Abraham that he would justify the Gentiles by faith, and Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. The great arc of Romans runs from the Father’s judgment through the Son’s propitiation to the Spirit’s deliverance.
This prepares is for
…the biggest Christian thought of all: The whole Bible is one complete book that reveals the Trinity. That fact is what the ancient church fathers meant when they summarized the Christian faith in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God the Father … and in his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ … and in the Holy Spirit.” (emphases added)
But any unitarian can fully endorse the Apostle’s Creed. And in the 2nd c., when various shorter forms of what eventually was called “The Apostles Creed” were floating around, most catholic Christians were just not trinitarians at all. Many, at least of the catholic intellectuals, were Logos theologians, holding that some time before creation, God externalized his Word, which is to say that he created a helper, an agent alongside himself, the pre-existent Son. The status of the Holy Spirit was at this point unclear.
Or take the 17th c. English unitarian John Bidle. (aka Biddle) He denied any Trinity doctrine; for him, as for the Logos theologians, the one God just is the Father. A long time ago, he created the Son and Spirit. Would he have any problem with Sander’s “Trinitarian logic”? No – he too sees a pattern of three cooperating agents in all those texts.
I say all this not really to criticize Sanders – I recognize he’s writing a pop piece here – but rather the mainstream American evangelical tradition in which he’s swimming. In that lake, you’d never get the idea that Trinity doctrines were controversial (till Mormons and JWs came around), are that there have always been dueling, incompatible forms of them, and that anything that could be characterized as a trinitarian theology was pretty controversial among Christians from roughly 150-400, and from about 1520-1880. No (assumes many an evangelical) this must just be obviously right there in the Bible, since our views are all based purely on the Bible, and we believe in the Trinity.
Sigh.
There’s one thing I would criticize Sanders for. It is merely spin to claim that it’s a good thing that the doctrine isn’t clearly taught in any one place in the Bible. Even if it is correct that what Sanders calls “the” doctrine is the best reading of the Bible, all things considered, it still would be more clearly a teaching thereof, and so less disputed and less confusing, if it were expressed, as it were, in one breath.
But, it is not. So, argue we must – about the meaning of the various texts, and about which Trinity theory, if any, makes the best sense of them? Which, if any, as Sanders says, is “the key to the entire book.”
Update: here’s a positive review of Sanders’s recent book. I haven’t had a chance to read it, but evidently he argues that in some sense evangelicals are the“most thoroughly Trinitarian Christians in the history of the church”.
Can we infer from the lack of a teaching scripture on the Trinity that we are supposed to argue about it? I don’t want to sound lazy, Ihave given this PLENTY of thought- but I don’t think it matters whether or not we come up with an iron-clad explanation of how the Trinity “works”.
I rather appreciate what you call Greg’s “pop-theology”- laying out just what the Bible straight teaches. For the unwashed, pop-Christian masses, everything you could possibly need to be a functioning, healthy, doctrinally sould Christ-follower is right there.
And I personally don’t trust the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches to be able to claim an “official” Trinity doctrine any more than I trust them to have any idea who Peter’s successor was (or to be able to prove that Peter was any kind of Pope in the first place).
It’s been 2000 years of arguing! And in the meantime, quite a bit of progress has been made without anyone having an agreed-upon dissection of the Trinity. Agreeing about what the Bible explicitly teaches and letting everyone have their own little theories about the rest seems the most rational thing to do.
Hi Matt,
I meant no offense with “pop piece” – everything I write here is that.
My SEP “Trinity” piece is written objectively; I don’t think it’s appropriate to advocate for a position in an encyclopedia article. My view is what I describe as “humanitarian unitarian” in the supplement there on unitarianism. I talk about my views in my recent “evolution” series, esp. part . I’ve not yet addressed the issue of texts often read as implying the “preexistence” of Jesus, but will in a future post. About love: I love God, and his unique Son.
Hey Dale:
I read your piece and I got the point that you had issues with Fred Sanders piece (I think you called it a pop piece–although I would contend there’s a huge difference between a pop piece and something that’s accessible). However, after reading your article on the Trinity, I still have no clue what you actually believe and love about the Trinity. Did I miss something? If so, could you take a stab at what you believe or point me to something that summarizes your position?
Josh – I’ve also had thoughtful evangelicals tell me that they’ve assumed f = g. This is not at all surprising to me – though it goes against most trinitarian thinking, that thesis is everywhere presupposed in the NT.
Hi Josh,
Actually, I think we probably agree on this. It is a shibboleth for evangelicals that “Jesus is God”. But when I query folks about this, it’s a a jumble of: he’s a part of God, he’s God himself, he’s a personality of God, and he’s God in some sense we can’t understand.
But the second of those is an important strand in evangelical thinking. It shows up frequently in prayer, in which “Jesus”, “Father” and “God” are used interchangably – the assumption being that those are 3 names for one thing.
Also, I’ve noticed that in some contexts, “Jesus CHRIST” seems to mean “the CHRISTIAN God”. In other words, it is a God-term that’s used when one wants to underscore that it is God as understood by Christians.
So I agree – evangelicals think “Jesus is God” but not in any precise sense. This means, though, that they slide around between different ideas. One of these, is that they are =.
This is particularly clear in apologetics contexts, where people argue like this:
Only God could to F.
Jesus does F.
Ergo, Jesus = God.
The form of premise 1 is: (x) (Fx -> g = x)
This can be less clear when people put things in terms of Jesus’ “divinity”. But still, the assumption is that there’s only one divinity.
You’re right that standard explications of the orthodox formulas could suggest relative id. (same god, but not same self) But my experience is that only the wiliest metaphysician can accept rel id. – ordinary people have a hard time even grasping it, and seem to assume that = isn’t kind-relative.
“This is an important caveat, for I think that many understand by “Jesus is God” that Jesus and God are one and the same, i.e. numerically one.”
The last bit (“i.e….”) seems to strong. First, it seems like an enthymematic inference. And if that’s the case, then whatever we punch into place there will raise eyebrows amongst “the folk”, I think.
Though we probably each have our empirical evidence, my engagement with “the folk” is that they think of Jesus as God but not in a “precisified” way. For example, many think of Jesus as their friend and companion but the Father as a lawgiver; hence they think of Jesus as God, but in a way that leaves open for Jesus to be genuinely different than the Father. And if they understand that numerical identity would ordinarily entail transitivity, they would resist the suggestion that Jesus and God are numerically identical.
Of course, I’m leaving out much refinement in this (e.g., relative identity theses could help us unwrap the numerical identity problem), but if we’re trying to get at the unsophisticated (but not unreflective, since unreflective people don’t even worry about these matters) picture that “the folk” have here, we should leave aside some of those anyway.
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Marg
The points you made earlier about Christ and the Father being ‘one’ were not fully dealt with.
THe Greek word to describe ‘one’ in John 10 verse 30 is ‘ev’ – “I and the Father are one”
If you consult your Greek Interlinear you will find that ‘ev’ is used to denote unity of purpose or ‘having a single purpose’
In 1 Corinthians 3 v8
“… the one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose”
Phillipians 2 v 2
“… united in faith with a common purpose..”
Regarding the authority of the early church, a Roman Catholic priest recently ‘opened my eyes’ by saying to me “but of course you Protestants do not have a hope- it is impossible to justify much doctrine if one relies purely on “Sola scriptura” -we (catholics) have the advantage of the writings of the Early Church Fathers, the lives of the Saints, and Papal infallibility to fall back on”
Best Wishes
John
Whoops! Looks like the links you provide already answer my second question.
Thanks! Those are helpful resources. I will study them. What I had in mind, in particular, was this:
Sometimes I am told by my more high church friends that I should accept the authority of certain councils. Your comment suggested that there were things pronounced by those councils that lots of high church people (and Christians generally) wouldn’t want to endorse–like the stuff about icons and excommunication. That sounded like relevant information that I need to know if I’m going to think through this stuff. So I just wanted to know where I could find more.
Also, (sorry to bombard you with questions, feel free to not answer if you don’t have time) I am sometimes told by my more high church friends that if I accept the authority of the Bible, then I have got to accept the authority of the relevant councils that judged the Bible to be authoritative. I guess the rough idea is supposed to be this: We only know what counts as scripture and what doesn’t because of those councils. So if we don’t trust the relevant councils then we have no basis for saying what counts as scripture and what doesn’t. I wonder, could you suggest any resources for thinking through that issue?
Thanks Again!
Hi Scott – not sure which parts of 10 you mean. The best book I know of re: the canon is this one.
The standard councils text is this 2 volume set.
My comment re: bishops are influenced by some things I’ve read relating to the idea of house churches. Here’s one interesting one. The matter of the monoepiscopal system is a dark one, and a controversial one.
Dear Professor Tuggy,
Could you refer me to some books or blogs or posts by you that take up in further detail the kind of ideas you discuss in comment 10?
Thanks!
Marg,
Yes, the divine will always delights to do good as well. And there is never opposition between the human and divine wills in Christ. Thanks again for the interaction.
If he has two wills, then both of his wills (not just one) delight to do the will of his God. In fact, one of his wills has ALWAYS delighted to do the will of his God.
I have a problem with two different wills, but I think we might as well leave it at that.
Marg,
Thanks for your interaction here.
Jesus is a Divine Person, not a human Person (One Person in Christ). He has a human nature that he assumed from his mother.
As the eternal Son, he shares ONE will with the Spirit and the Father (will is a faculty of nature, not person–otherwise the Trinity would have three wills as there are 3 Persons). At the Incarnation, that eternal Divine Person of the Son unites to himself full human nature including the human will (will is also a faculty of human nature). The first Adam willed freely to sin, the second Adam willed (humanly) as man to obey. Christ has TWO natures, TWO wills, TWO natural energies. His human will as seen in Gethsemene submits freely to the Divine will. The 6th Ecumenical Council addresses all of this nicely.
Christ prays the church will be one in John 17.
Only after the Reformation was this unity thought to be invisible rather that a visible body.
Peace in Him.
Nicely put, Canadian. The Nicene Creed isn’t exactly John 17, but I can’t quarrel with the perfect communion that the only true God enjoys with his Son and his Spirit.
My only objection would be in the sentence
Psalm 40:8 and Hebrews 1:2 lead me to believe that he ALWAYS delighted to do the will of his God. I have difficulty seeing a contrast between his human will and whatever will he had before he became a man.
Back to Christ’s prayer in John 17 – I see no suggestion of any kind of organization such as the one you are espousing.
But I don’t mind dropping the subject. We have different viewpoints, and that probably won’t change.
Dale, I understand your description of Clark as
I believe exactly the same thing. But I suspect he ALSO believed in the existence of the Holy Spirit. (I’ll have to read more of his writings to be sure of that.)
In that case, he is a unitarian who believes that there is only one true God (John 17:3), FROM WHOM all things (including his Son and his Spirit) originate.
That, it seems to me, fits the “creed” of 1 Corinthians 8:6. And because there are three involved, I consider the view to be trinitarian in the general sense, but not in the orthodox sense of tri-unism.
I think you have made the same point in some of your posts. Such a unitarian can subscribe to the Apostles Creed with no difficulty, even though it clearly names three in whom (which) we believe.
The creeds after that (I think) become less and less credible to such a unitarian-trinitarian. They certainly do to me.
But I am ready to be corrected. I have never formally studied theology or philosophy, and I am anxious to learn.
Dale,
Thanks for your response.
It’s not that folks are not Christian, but not in the fullness of the faith. That does not make everything optional, however.
Anathema’s are generally directed at those within the church who reject her dogmatic decisions. Images are found in the most ancient churches discovered, the catacombs, burial sites, chalices etc. To expect a full blow theology of iconography in the New Testament is akin to expecting the canon delineated there as well, or as your post alludes to, clear Trinitarian and Incarnational dogma without respect to the life of the Spirit of God within the ground and pillar of the truth.
Here’s the crux of the issue. Who should we look to for our Old Testament canon, 1 century anti-Christian Jews at Jamnia or the Church? Who should we get our image theology from, Muslim influence in the East–Jewish influence in Palestine, or the church? It all comes back to who has divine authority. The Protestant paradigm is this: investigate the sources, whether they are history, scripture, or the father’s, and then take a position as a result of academic scientific methodology. The EO paradigm is that this only leads to scholarly or personal opinion with no authority to definitively bind the conscience of all Christians and that God will lead the Church into all truth as he promised.
Hi Canadian,
Presumably, clergy participating in a council would have destroyed heretical materials, precisely because of the part I mentioned. I still wonder if you’re willing to consider all your non-icon-using Christian friends simply not Christians at all.
About icon use – Do historians takes seriously the claim that use of them goes back to the 1st c, back to the proto-catholic movement is it was, say in 80 CE? I thought the norm was for Jewish worship at that time to be aniconic, and so the same for early Christians. Wouldn’t one expect to see this somewhere in the NT?
By the way – we should distinguish any use of religious art (e.g. temples) from the honoring of images.
A lot of scruples about icon use surely goes back to the aniconic nature of OT worship – in my view, it’s a stretch to claim that it is cultural (i.e. just unfamiliarity is the issue), or that it represents a low view of the value of the material world.
Because I teach Religious Studies, I’m very interested in this topic of image use, and the concept of idolatry. You should some time look at the reasons Hindu intellectuals cite for their use of images. e.g. Diana Eck, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India.
I’ve had a couple of friends convert to Orthodoxy. I wish you all the best. My only unasked for bit of advice would be to filter some of the more aggressive claims by the known facts of history, such as they are.
Marg,
The Nicene creed also says I believe in one God–the Father almighty. He eternally begets his Son. The Holy Spirit proceeds from him. He is the unbegotten fountainhead of the communion of 3 persons with one essence. His Son shares a will with Him and the Spirit. His Son also has a human will which obey’s the Father’s will with delight. The person’s are inseparable as to nature but distinct as to Person. There was never a time when the Son and Spirit were not in communion with the Father.
Dale,
I’m not a competent historical source for these things but it seems that heirarchy is present in the NT where Judas’ “office” (bishopric) is immediately filled. The apostles ordain deacons for service. Paul ordains Titus and Timothy and gives them authority to ordain elders in vast regions whereas some of the ones they ordained were confined to cities or congregations and did not have the same authority to themselves go and ordain in vast areas. eg. Tit 1:5.
Ordination is a sacramental occasion with laying on of hands, invoking of God, commissioning. The people may choose worthy candidates as in the first diaconate ordination in Acts, but ordination is by authority of those already ordained. The earliest fathers who were around before the apostles were gone testify in writing to apostolic succession, and the unity found in the bishop. To ordain bishops, at least a few bishops from surrounding areas must ordain, you see this in the canons of Nicea I think.
You make reference to the church being primarily “local”, but the church has always been universal at the same time. Four crucial marks: ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, and APOSTOLIC the creed says. I think it may have been Ignatius who said “where the bishop is, there is the catholic church.” So the local bishop would act in disciplinary cases locally but he was acting on behalf of Christ with the authority of the church. So discipline need not go higher than the local bishop unless a Council of bishops is required for serious matters.
As to icons. Hey, who in the Western world finds this naturally easy. However, part of this is cultural. Eastern and middle eastern, Asian, Russian, European cultures in varying ways do not have the aversion we do to people and things. Asians bow to one another, some cultures kiss (men too). But in reality, this is Christological like nearly everything from the Councils. God in taking on human flesh and becoming the very image (icon) of God changes the Christian’s view of matter itself. Christ will redeem all of creation not just humans. All things will be summed up in him Paul says. He takes matter and shows that it can contain and partake of the divine without becoming divine by nature. If Kodak would have had better market share, there would have been images of Jesus Christ in Israel at the time. People saw him and visualized him every day. The 7th Council was preserving worship of the incarnate God in the churches. The images of saints, Christ, angels, and the Theotokos are not idols for worship, but created matter being used for the divine purpose of honoring the persons and grace of God in those who are alive and a cloud of witnesses. The council said the worship of adoration is reserved alone to the supersubstantial and life-giving Trinity.
We have to remember, that the entire church practiced this.
Schaaf’s NPNF II:vol14 says under “Excursus on the Reception of the 7th Council”:
“No historian pretends that the iconoclastic (image breakers) opinions had any hold on the masses of the people. It was strictly speaking a court movement, backed by the army, and whenever the images were laid low and their verneration comdemned it was by the power of the state, enforcing its will upon a yeilding and, as we would call them today, Erastian clergy.”
Icons as the council itself testifies, was always the tradition of the church.
I could bring up the Israelite exiles commanded by God to bow toward and pray toward the temple (God icon-ed himself in the temple) from Babylon; and bowing in reverence within the temple which had images of Cherebim, angels, etc. The Prototype gets the worship (in the case of God) or the loving honor (in the case of the saints), the icon is God’s loving condescension to our tactile human nature–GOD LIKES “STUFF”.
And finally, in regard to your disciplinary canons from the Council, remember what was at stake at the time—Christ himself. Even the council read letters of heretics, so those letters were kept for the purpose. Not honoring icons removes you from the church because they were present and there was no other Christian church, but heretical assemblies. You see, form and content of worship is very important for the protection of dogma and the passing on of the faith as well as scripture. This is why removing scripture from the context and worship of the church Christ established produces anarchy and heresy. Ok, sorry. Time to quit.
The mutual communion between God and his Son is obvious; but the Trinity is simply not there.
In verse 3, Jesus explicitly identifies “the only true God” as the Father. The Father sends the Son, and the Son obeys the Father’s will with delight. There is perfect communion between the Father who commands and the Son who obeys.
Christ certainly prayed that his disciples be one, even as he and his Father are one. The answer to that prayer is (I believe) an on-going process which will be complete only when Christ comes to make an end of sin.
But the Trinity is nowhere found in the chapter.
Marg,
In verses 20-23 witness the mutual communion of Father in Son, Son in Father and with loving mercy Christ implores the Father to make his people to “be one in Us” (with the Father explicitly and by implication with the consubstantial and undivided Trinity). Jesus says that he gives them the glory that the Father gave him that we may be one!! Just like in Christ himself, God is pleased to allow the human and divine to commune in union. Communion and participation with the holy Trinity necessarily is unified, hence the church being the body of Christ is connected to her head as one body. A body is not invisible, but visible–we are no Docetists.
Marg,
Clarke – despite the title of his book (The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity) is best understood as a unitarian, of the subordintionist sort (believes in the pre-existence, two natures, and derived divinity of Jesus). In the big picture, his views are much like Origen’s. This is no accident, as Clarke based his view on the Bible along with the pre-Nicene fathers.
Hi Canadian,
You raise big issues, and important issues. I appreciate the thought you’ve put into this. More than we can get into in a thread. It is certainly interesting that Christianity seemed to do fine, at least for awhile, with no clearly defined canon. I would just make one comment – a lot hinges on whether you think the development of the one-bishop system was correct. If not, you’ll view the authority of “the church” do deal with those who stray etc. quite differently, i.e. as having to do with local assemblies, rather than with an institution headed by a network of ranked bishops.
But back to councils. Nicea II says some interesting things. To wit,
Any bishop, priest, or deacon possessing anti-icon books should be excommunicated.
(Section 9)
Any lay person who doesn’t honor icons etc. with the right gestures should be excommunicated. (End of “definition”, and section 3)
Same with anyone who rejects any “written or unwritten” tradition. (section 4)
I, and a great many Christians, would not be comfortable kissing etc. icons.
Do you really accept on the basis of Nicea II that we’re thereby excluded from God’s one true church? Or that an Orthodox priest with, say, Puritan books on his shelf, should be summarily thrown out?
I am familiar with John 17, but no version I have says that Christ was praying that the church be one as the Trinity is one. What version are you referring to?
Marg,
You said: Wrong “fathers”.
🙂
You asked: “Would you tell me where I can find this? It isn’t in any Bible I have ever seen.”
It’s extra-biblical tradition, darn it!
Just kidding.
John 17
Should we think that Christ’s prayer is not answered by the Father?
We’ll forget the Athanasian creed. Wrong “fathers”. But I can still respect the writing of a Jesuit scholar like Fr. John Murray, whose exposition of Exodus 3 is wonderful, I think.
I can also respect the writing of Frederica Mathewes-Green, with whom you will undoubtedly be familiar.
One sentence in your post troubles me.
Would you tell me where I can find this? It isn’t in any Bible I have ever seen.
Hi Marg,
You said:
“if the first church leaders wrote down what they concluded (with the help of the Holy Spirit), then I am inclined to put more faith in what they actually wrote than in what the bishops of later years have decreed they meant. Of course, there is no guarantee that I understand it either; but open and free discussion can shed a lot of light, and is healthier than the tactic of threatening eternal damnation upon anyone who does not agree fully with the Athanasian Creed.”
The Orthodox do not use the Athanasian creed, it contains the filioque “and the Son” which is against the Nicene creed and John 14.
The problem is not “putting more faith” in the father’s than scripture. We put faith in them every time we open our bibles as there is no inspired table of contents to guarantee the fathers selected only inspired books? In other words, our bibles are derived from Tradition though they are inspired and God-breathed. Ultimately though, it is putting our faith in God to submit to the authority he ordained. The new testament church had no apostolic writings for at least 40 years and yet exploded in growth all over the world. Also, as protestant Keith Mathison said in his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura: “every appeal to scripture is an appeal to an interpretation of scripture.” But scripture itself does not give ultimate interpretive authority to the individual but to the church which is the ground and pillar of the truth. 1Tim 3:15
Open and free discussion is fine as far as it goes, but Jesus commanded the apostles to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach them to obey all that Christ commanded them and that he would be with them TIL THE END OF THE AGE. He promised the gates of hell would not prevail against this church, and prayed she would be one as the Trinity is.
Matthew 18:17-18 shows that if someone is at fault, the church has the authority of discipline such that that person can be considered a heathen if he refuses to listen to her as she has a binding and loosing authority with God. Now of course there can be sinful persons in authority and abusive authority is addressed in scripture, but the point is that the church was given real authority from Christ that was not to die out with the apostles. And nowhere was schism permitted even in some pretty questionable NT churches.
My fellow Canadian has an interesting position. I don’t share it, but I think I can understand it. It seems safe.
Nevertheless, if the first church leaders wrote down what they concluded (with the help of the Holy Spirit), then I am inclined to put more faith in what they actually wrote than in what the bishops of later years have decreed they meant. Of course, there is no guarantee that I understand it either; but open and free discussion can shed a lot of light, and is healthier than the tactic of threatening eternal damnation upon anyone who does not agree fully with the Athanasian Creed.
By the way, I appreciate the Catholic Encyclopedia. It records, candidly, the kind of threats (and worse) that the bishops used to achieve unanimity in their decisions. It inspires confidence in the accuracy of the encyclopedia, but not in the unanimous decisions of the bishops.
Dale – during “The Great Trinity Debate” you mentioned an Anglican cleric named Samuel Clarke. I remember being very much impressed with his views. He was a trinitarian – but not a tri-unist. There is a seemingly small (but actually large) difference between the two.
So in regard to your post, the whole point to me is that scripture alone is not intended by God as a textbook or manual on himself that defines all things needful. AND CORRECT TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY IS NEEDFUL!
For me it’s no longer–sigh–back to the text to try to stack up enough evidence for the position I hold, or to FIND the position I should hold (without reference to the church).
But rather, lets go to scripture and then see the wonders and mysteries of our God come to life in his body, the church.
Hey Dale,
I am a dysfunctional Reformed Baptist heading to Eastern Orthodoxy :-0
So, yes for II Nicea and no for Lateran. I have come to believe that the Church has the life of the Holy Spirit (grace) always in her and that she is a visible body on earth with real authority. The New testament church had some characteristics that my Protestantism does not have:
She discerns between, and defines what is dogmatically true and what is heretical (it’s above the level of personal or scholarly opinion which can never bind the conscience and demand the assent of faith to such definitions) Matt 18.
She identifies and forbids schism. (Schism is impossible to identify or expose in Protestantism–schism from who?).
She has interpretive authority of scripture (watch the apostles NOT use just the historical grammatical method for OT text.) This does not mean she can force arbitrary meanings on holy writ, but that she is organically connected to the author and therefore knows scripture’s true meaning. Christians fully engage the text, but submit ultimately to Christ’s body. In Acts 15, I’m sure there was heated debate, fiery discussion and disagreement. At the end, though everyone submitted their opinions and deferred to the Conciliar church who examined scripture, tradition, and testimony to arrive at the decision which they admit the Holy Spirit AND they came to–(this is Incarnational in itself).
I am not a zealot with convert-itis, but someone who in fear and trembling want’s to submit to those that have the rule over me. Heb 13?
Hi Canadian,
Thanks for the comment. You mention ancient councils, but when, in your view, did this special grace expire, if ever it did? I mean, you hold that God’s way is for Christians to trust the Church, and specifically, her councils, as they’ve been guided by the Holy Spirit. In your view, would this hold, say, of the 2nd Council of Nicea (787) or the 4th Lateran Council (1215)?
The biblicist requires his Trinitarian and Incarnational doctrine to be specific in scripture or he is uneasy and can run off and start a new church that is not Trinitarian. The ancient Christians however trusted God to lead the Conciliar Church into all truth and of course submitted to her when she proclaimed what seemed good to the Holy Spirit and the fathers in the Councils. The Creedal and ancient view is that God the Father is the “one God” and fountain head of the Trinity.
So I do not think that we should go to the text to “argue we must” as if it will procure dogmatic Trinitarian unity (when has that ever happened in Protestantism?) But rather submit to the Conciliar definitions of the church which they concluded from scripture, Tradition, and trust in the Holy Spirit. God has provided a way for his people to differentiate between human opinion and irreformable dogma so that simple Christians can give the assent of faith with confidence.
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