On a Rebuttal to my “How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament” – Part 3

Continuing to work through this critique of my post (part 1, part 2) – our friend Annoyed Pinoy writes,

Yet, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are repeatedly associated with Yahweh/Jehovah. See, for example, my blog: Identifying Jesus with Yahweh/Jehovah 

Associated, sure, and in various ways. This is a common equivocation, I find, with theologians. We say “identify with” to mean “associate (in some way) with”. Theologians quite correctly observe that Jesus is in many ways associated with God (e.g. by being his Son, by being empowered by him), and then slide illegitimately to the idea that Jesus is identified with, i.e. asserted to be numerically one with God, which he never is. To the contrary, all biblical authors assume God and the Messiah / Jesus to have differed in various ways. So we know that they think them to be two beings. Sure, being numerically one with is a way things (rather: thing) can be associated (with itself). But when we find things related in this way, we collapse them mentally, that is, we realize that we’re dealing with one being here, not with two.

Now even though you’ve already responded, endorsing the first argument and denying the second, you want to try to argue that the whole exercise is illegitimate or question-begging – I think, because you still feel the pull of the second argument. You say,

U3 is a conclusion based on an external critique using anti-Trinitarian definitions of key words in the premises.

Nope. No such problems. You agreed with the first premise, and disagreed with the second, in the senses that I meant them. No need to reach for this potentially well-poisoning move, that somehow this argument just stupidly assumes what is supposed to be proved.

A consistent internal critique would not lead to U3. Besides, this external critique doesn’t take into full consideration what the word “Trinity” entails. That is, how and what Trinitarians  mean by the term, “Trinity.”

Annoyed, I’m not sure what you mean by “would not lead to.” The argument is logically valid, for anyone, trinitarian or not.  I have taken rather fully into consideration what trinitarians think, and am focusing on a view they hold in common, which is that the one God just is (is identical to) the Trinity. I don’t see how you’re getting any grip on my arguments here. But that’s OK; you’ve already responded.

[Dale, commenting on T1, the shared first premise of both arguments:] So far, this has all been easy – just logic, combined with a self-evident truth which everyone knows.

I’m not sure which self-evident truth Dale is referring to.

The indiscernibility of identicals; this is how we know T1, in conjunction with the fact that anyone will think things are true of the Father that aren’t true of the Trinity, and vice-versa. In anyone’s view, if there are such, they do or even just could differ. So, they can’t be one and the same.

[Dale:] But now things get a little harder. You must ask: which do I have more reason to believe – T2 or U2?

[Annoyed:] Trinitarians don’t have to choose one or the other. Trinitarians can affirm both consistently without a logical contradiction.

Not if you’re granting T1, which you must. Also, you denied U2, so you don’t need to urge that they could both be true. I think you want to say that other claims which sort of sound like T2 and U2 may both be true. Well sure, maybe. But let’s stick with the matters at hand.

[Dale:] I suggest that a good Christian should ask: WWJD? (What Would Jesus Do?). And our best information about that is in the New Testament. Does it explicitly teach either T2 or U2?

[Annoyed:] Why limit it to explicit statements?

Just because we have less chance of misunderstanding those. We can be pretty bad at drawing implications out of what they say; we often draw out ones they would not endorse, because we hold to some other theory which they would not agree with. (Classic example: explicit: Jesus forgives sins. Reader assumes that only God can do that, thinks the writer means to imply that Jesus is God.) My point is if those explicit statements are sufficient for us to choose between T2 and U2, we can avoid the mud pits of proof-text wars. I omit here your rant or progressive revelation, just because I agree completely. And by no means to limit myself, in understand the NT, to explicit assertions.

Yes, I also agree that Jesus usually kept his Messiahship on the down-low. But the gospels and the rest of the NT shout it from the rooftops – it is the repeated, emphasized main thesis of all the gospels and Acts too. Sorry, I don’t see Jesus as anywhere hinting that he’s God himself, or that he’s one ousia with God, or a “Person” within the Trinity which is God. Such would all be anachronisms, and almost unthinkable in the first century. The assumption all around is that the Messiah a a man, a man whom God anoints for the special job of reigning on David’s throne. Of course, it turned out that there was much more to it than that!

About Mark, I disagree. (Also, here.) I hope to do a podcast some time devoted to these new-fangled claims that the “full deity” of Jesus is just obviously implied all through Mark. I think this is a bizarre, quasi-gnostic reading, which tries to outsmart the author, downplaying his own clear, repeated thesis (that Jesus is God’s Messiah, aka God’s Son) and favor of the encoded (!) message that really, Jesus is God himself – a message that is, Mark would think, not consistent with his thesis!

One powerful argument against this is that competent readers in ancient times simply did not draw this conclusion, I think from any of the gospels, and especially not from the synoptics. See, e.g. this series. Of course, this doesn’t address the views of Paul; but those are another can of worms. I process one big worm in the can in episodes 14-16 of the podcast.

In sum, I don’t think you fully appreciate how the texts I quote, and others, support U2. You bring up a bunch of tangential matters, but I don’t see how you read the texts I cite as not teaching the identity of the one God and the Father, and that this one is the God over Jesus. Take this one,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  (1 Peter 1:3, ESV)

Annoyed, can’t you see that “the God” and “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” are here used as co-referring terms? This is how we know the author assumes them to be one and the same. It’s this one who he thinks bears two relations to the man Jesus – this one is his god, and his father, the god over him who he must honor, and the father, the parental figure, over him, whom he must obey. This is Yahweh; ho theos in the NT nearly always or always means Yahweh. But all the NT authors assume this; look, for instance, at the greeting of any of Paul’s letters. They show him assuming that God (i.e. the one true God, Yahweh) is the Father, and then he sends greetings also from Jesus. And he’s not being redundant.

If you accept the authority of the NT, even when it contradicts later catholic traditions, you should let it push you towards U2 and so against T2. If you think Constantinople can overrule the apostles, that’s another conversation.

Next time: a “mountain of evidence” and Christmas card from the Obamas.