Debating John 1: Eusebius vs. Marcellus
A forgotten 4th c. debate: Is the Logos of John 1 a divine being in addition to God, or a power and energy of God?
A forgotten 4th c. debate: Is the Logos of John 1 a divine being in addition to God, or a power and energy of God?
Last month my publisher gave the green light to start work on The Same God? Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures. Yes, that old question of whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians, which surfaced again last year when Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor at Wheaton College, was suspended following her Facebook post citing Pope Francis’s statement that Muslims and Christians… Read More »God and Allah
Dr. Lee Irons on his contribution to the new book The Son: Three Views of the Identity of Jesus, interview by Dr. Dale Tuggy for episode 117 of the trinities podcast.
In this follow-up post, three factors that make Rufinus’ corruption of Origen’s On First Principles all the more egregious. First, after recklessly changing anything he doesn’t like in translating Origen’s book, absurdly claiming that anything Origen says that doesn’t comport with the (then) new Nicene orthodoxy must have been changed by heretics, and lyingly (or idiotically) claiming to have filled things in only with Origen’s other words or ideas… Read More »Rufinus’s corruption of Origen’s On First Principles – Part 2
Many thanks to my fellow bloggers Bill Vallicella and Aiden Kimel for their thoughtful posts on the discussion/debate between Bill and me on whether God is to be thought of as a unique and perfect being, or not a being, but rather “Being itself” or “Existence.” I was simply not able to keep up, due to travel and other immediate demands. For those following the… Read More »Dialogue with the Maverick Philosopher: God is a being, not Being itself – part 3
“All we need is one substance to cure the ills of our society!” “I have personal experience with substance abuse, and it is wrong.”
Before I start a mini-series on the Trinitarian thought of Henry of Ghent, I thought it would be good to offer a brief survey of the late 13th c. landscape. This is way too brief and fairly focused, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. As the scholastics would say, you cannot will to do something, unless you have some sort of knowledge. No voluntary action without knowledge, however imperfect or confused that knowledge is! (As an aside: Jean-Luc Marion, a contemporary philosophical-theologian and former student of Jacques Derrida contests this medieval Aristotelian claim, and argues that acts of will –i.e. to love- does or can precede any knowledge.)
Of all the issues to discuss about the Trinity the one at hand here is the question: what causes or explains why the divine persons are really distinct from each other? We know there are three persons, and one ‘substance’/’ousia’ from Scripture and our orthodox Creeds, but is there anything that we could say that might account for why there are three, and not say five divine persons? Or even, why not say there is a potential infinity of divine persons (on some contestable account of the deification of believers)? You get my point. Why three divine persons and what makes it that there are three, no more and no less?
Celsus was a pagan philosopher, essentially a cultural and religious conservative, who wrote a book attacking Christianity, perhaps around 177-80 (though some have argued that it must be no later than 161).
Decades later, it is not clear exactly why, the great Christian scholar Origen (182-254) wrote a massive refutation of this book, quoting substantial portions of it. This is the eight-book Against Celsus, which was probably written aronud 246-8.
There are many, many interesting things in the book. Here’s a quotation relevant to our present series:
[Celsus writes:] If these men [Christians] worshiped no other God but one, perhaps they would have a valid argument against the others. But in fact they worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently [Jesus], and yet think it is not inconsistent with monotheism if they worship His [God’s] servant [Jesus]. [Origen responds:] Read More »trinitarian or unitarian? 5 – Origen’s Against Celsus – Part 1
McLatchie’s mistake about historical, mainstream Christian theologies.
“God is greater than man.“ Job 33:12. Every man. All men. Everywhere. Beginning to end. Forever. — John Piper (@JohnPiper) December 17, 2015 My reply is: let us consider this inconsistent triad. Just as a matter of logic, not all three can be true – at least one must be false. But which? Jesus is God. God is greater than any man. Jesus is a… Read More »Is God greater than any man?
I dropped two nukes on Dale’s divine deception argument in two previous posts, which I dubbed Fat Boy and Little Man, respectively. From the ashes Dale returned desperate and feeble fire. Out of respect for my worthy friend foe, I now respond with some a fallout clean up and hereafter promise ceasefire. Dale’s Response to Little Boy In answer to my skeptical theist response to… Read More »Surrejoinder on Divine Deception
A few thoughts on re-reading Sudduth’s open letter explaining his conversion.
Saith Sudduth,
Krishna is the all-attractive Absolute who is manifested in the different religious traditions of the world. There is merging into impersonal Brahman. There are also distinctly theistic experiences in which the self encounters a personal God.
The ultimate being is either personal or not. Thus, it can’t be that both the aforementioned experiences are veridical, i.e. represent God as God really is.
I think Sudduth agrees; he goes on to explain that “merging” experiences are something like the devotee coming in contract with what some would call the “energies” of God. Of course, Indian philosophers like Sankara would disagree. And I don’t know why we should accept Sudduth’s claim that:
…that transcendental consciousness (the aim of nearly all religious traditions) is in fact variegated in nature.
I don’t know that there is any one general sort of experience which nearly all traditions aim at. Experiences of a loving god are not at all like the sorts of experiences monistic types profess, wherein, they say, Read More »A Few Thoughts on Sudduth’s Open Letter
Prolific blogger (at Triablogue) Steve Hays and I have recently been discussing various things.
At the end of a recent exchange, I basically said: Dude, I don’t know what you think “the” doctrine of the Trinity is. What, in your view, does it mean to say that God is a Trinity?
He’s now responded here.
In this post, I try to understand just what he’s claiming, in other words, what he takes trinitarianism (rightly understood) to be.
This is a bit risky, because I think he’s confused about the concept of identity, and I’m trying to hear a self-consistent view here.
The first job in critical thinking is carefully listening to what the source at hand is saying. Here I listen carefully, editing out a lot of his methodological musings and terminological quibbles, trying to get to the meat of his view.
I think the meat starts here:Read More »What is the Trinity? A Dialogue with Steve Hays – Part 1
Last time, I mentioned a well done book by evangelical philosopher Gregg Ten Elshoff on the topic of self-deception and the Christian life. He noted that one may easily have a false belief about what one believes, and he noted that there can be strong social pressures to believe that one has beliefs one doesn’t (and that one lacks beliefs one in fact has). As… Read More »You’re Foolin’ Yourself and You Don’t Believe It – Part 2
“And the best thing is, we can take these blocks apart!”
In the last post, I introduced the ‘generic view’ of the trinity, namely the claim that Divinity (that which makes the divine persons God/divine) is shared equally by all three persons and so does not belong to any one divine person more than another. In this post, I would like to highlight some of the issues faced by a generic view.
My point of departure is modern day criticism of the generic view such as that of Colin Gunton and John Zizioulas (to name just a few). These authors are not, in my opinion, the most philosophically astute critics, but nevertheless, they do highlight some of the issues relevant for the generic view.
Read More »Derivation vs. Generic Theories – part 6: Issues for the Generic View (JT)
A prolific apologist embraces so-called “monarchical trinitarianism,” on which the one God just is the Father, not the Trinity.
Can one prove that the biblical Jesus is Yahweh based on his being savior or creator, or his being worshiped?
I’ve been meaning to get back to Ben for a while, to continue our dialogue on biblical monotheism and related matters. (Previous post.) In his reply, Ben says, I gather that Bauckham affirms (in different words) that monotheism involves, (1) A strict partitioning of reality into divine and not-divine portions; and (2) The unity of the divine portion of reality, i.e. the divine reality acts… Read More »more on Ben Nasmith on monotheism