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10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #9 – Formulas vs. Interpretations

While there have long been standard terms and sentences relating to the Trinity, there is not and has never been any clear consensus about how to understand those terms and sentences. There is agreement about what the sentences do or don’t imply (Tritheism? No. Monotheism? Yes. Ontological inequalities between the three? No.) But there is not an interpretation of the sentences themselves which is held… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #9 – Formulas vs. Interpretations

Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Theologian and Philosopher

A while back I posted on a short, popular piece by Biola theologian Fred Sanders. He’s now responded. I’m going to continue the conversation, I hope shedding light on the differing assumptions and methods of present-day academic theologians and philosophers. I agree with Fred that responses-to-responses are usually boring. Here’s a greater crime: a (long) response to a response to a response. 😛

I guess what set me in motion was his claim, which struck me as unreasonable, that it’s a good thing that there’s no “Trinity verse” in the Bible – i.e. one which explicitly and clearly  states the doctrine.

In fact, up until I think some time in the late 19th c., trinitarians thought they had something pretty close:Read More »Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Theologian and Philosopher

confused kid

Mysterians at work in Dallas

confused kid
Clearly, the instructor’s work has been accomplished.

What I call positive mysterianism about the Trinity is the view that the doctrine, as best we can formulate it, is apparently contradictory.  Now many Christian philosophers resort to this in the end, but only after one or more elaborate attempts to spell the doctrine out in a coherent way. On the other hand, some jump more quickly for the claim, not really expanding on or interpreting the standard creedal formulas much at all. These are primarily who I have in mind when I use the label “positive mysterian”.

I ran across a striking version of this recently, in a blog post by theologian C. Michael Patton, who blogs at Parchment and Pen: a theology blog. In his interesting post, he says that all the typical analogies for the Trinity (shamrock, egg, water-ice-vapor, etc.) are useful only for showing what the Trinity doctrine is not.

This contrasts interestingly with what I call negative mysterians. Typically, and this holds for many of the Fathers, as well as for people like Brower and Rea nowadays, they hold that all these analogies are useful, at least when you pile together enough of them, for showing what the doctrine is. Individually, they are highly misleading, and only barely appropriate, but they seem to think that multiplying analogies like these results in our  achieving a minimal grasp of what is being claimed. Maybe they think the seeming inconsistency of the analogies sort of cancels out the misleading implications of each one considered alone.

In any case, in Patten’s view, the best you can do is to Read More »Mysterians at work in Dallas

missing link

the evolution of my views on the Trinity – part 6

Last time, c. 1998-2001, I was a social trinitarian along the lines of Richard Swinburne. While I was on the job market in 1999-2000, my former professor Stephen T. Davis was kind enough to invite me and a friend to attend the Incarnation summit, a follow up to the earlier interdisciplinary Trinity Summit. This was a great privilege, and I pretty much just observed. But… Read More »the evolution of my views on the Trinity – part 6

SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – ROUND 5 – BOWMAN – PART 3

As I explained in the previous installment, in round 5 Bowman is trying to show that not only does the Bible imply that all three Persons are divine, but also that they in some sense are the one God. In other words, he wants to show how the NT brings the three, as it were, within the being of the one God.

To do this, he considers a dozen triadic passages, in which the Three are all mentioned together in quick succession. Last time, I mulled over his treatment of the “Great Commission”  passage. This time, a few others, and I take a crack at another explanation of this triadic language.

First, as I look at Bowman’s interpretations, some of them strongly suggest that he thinks that asserting the divinity of each just is asserting each to be numerically identical to God. I looked into this more last time, but briefly, this won’t fly, as it’ll make the persons identical to one another. So it is not clear, even if his expositions are right, that really support an orthodox Trinity theory.

Second, I reiterate that Bowman does a good job here, assembling a dozen important passages, in which it is impossible to ignore the triadic language. Suppose the doctrine of the Trinity is just this vague claim: “there are three co-equal persons in God”. If that is true, that would explain why these three are often mentioned together, in a way which can suggest they are on an equal footing. I said last time that any unitarian is obligated to explain these triadic statements in a way which is both compatible with unitarianism, and which is independently motivated (in can’t be that the only appeal of the reading is that it saves one’s theology).

Here’s Bowman’s treatment of one such text:Read More »SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – ROUND 5 – BOWMAN – PART 3

von Harnack on logos theories and mystery

Here’s one reason why some theologians love to appeal to “mystery.” Regarding the second half of the second Christian century, the great church history von Harnack observes, …an urgent impulse necessarily made itself felt to define the contents and value of the Redeemer’s life and work, not, primarily, from the point of view of the proclamation of the Gospel, and the hopes of a future state,… Read More »von Harnack on logos theories and mystery

Credo House Ministries’ Inaccuracies about the Trinity and the Council of Nicea

I’ve blogged about these folks before. I do not enjoy criticizing apologists, because I think Christian apologetics is important. And the folks at Credo House Ministries seem like good-hearted and hard working Christians who are doing their best to help Christians love God with their minds. And I think Patton is an excellent blogger and writer. But I feel compelled to correct some of their… Read More »Credo House Ministries’ Inaccuracies about the Trinity and the Council of Nicea

Baptism in the NAME

“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”? Or “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier”? The editors of the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism weigh in here: Blessed Be the Name of the Lord | Christianity Today While I share the editors’ irritation with politically correct revision of liturgical and theological language, I think their reasoning in this opinion piece is poor. (Read their editorial, then see if you agree.) For one… Read More »Baptism in the NAME

podcast 26 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 2

In this episode Sean and I continue our discussion of “the Holy Spirit” in the New Testament, covering such topics as how “the Spirit” relates to worship and prayer in the New Testament, the eternal trinitarian “dance” discussed in recent trinitarian literature, the threefold baptismal formula, and “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” Some relevant links: Holmes’s edition of the Apostolic Fathers Ehrman’s Lost Scriptures (with… Read More »podcast 26 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 2

Simplifying the Indiscernibility of Identicals

equals - greenI’ve posted quite a few times here before about identity, and about the principle often called “Leibniz’s Law” – the Indiscernibility of Identicals. This is often put:

Necessarily, for any x and any y, x is identical to y only if for any P, x has P if and only if y has P. (Compare, e.g. Colin McGinn, Logical Properties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4-7.

I agree with other philosophers that this has apparent counterexamples, if “P” can stand either for any predicate or for any property.

But in my view, the underlying metaphysical intuition – that a thing can’t at one time be and not be a certain way – is undeniable. (And of course, it has important theological implications.)

I would restrict the “P” above to intrinsic properties, if I believed in properties. But I don’t. So I’ve been putting the principle like this:

The Indiscernibility of Identicals: Necessarily, any A and B are identical only if they (1) never have differed, (2) don’t differ, (3) will not ever differ, and (4) could not differ.

This formula doesn’t import any assumptions about property-theory, either for or against. Rather, it uses only a primitive concept of differing, or being different – as to qualitative aspect or way of being, not as to number. I think this well captures the intuition and fundamental conviction noted above.

But it now strikes me that the formula is needlessly complicated. Why not just this?Read More »Simplifying the Indiscernibility of Identicals

Roger Olson asks: How important is the doctrine of the Trinity?

Theologian Roger Olson asks, How important is the doctrine of the Trinity? He seems to hold, with many others, that …the doctrine of the Trinity is crucial, essential, indispensable to a robust and healthy Christian view of God. But, The problem is, of course, that many, perhaps most, Christians have little or no understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. And they couldn’t care less. Indeed.… Read More »Roger Olson asks: How important is the doctrine of the Trinity?

Kenny Pearce on the Trinity

Here are some interesting thoughts on trinitarian doctrine by young philosopher Kenny Pearce. I like the way Kenny resists simply settling for mysteries; he has a good sense of how empty that stance is. I’d have to disagree with his claim that persons are causally connected series of mental events, for several philosophical reasons. The main one is this: as stated, it implies something contradictory… Read More »Kenny Pearce on the Trinity

Mark Edwards on Councils and the Trinity

“The” doctrine of the Trinity was established neither at Nicea (325 AD) nor at Constantinople (381 AD). In catholic lore, it is all supposed to hang on the then novel term homoousios – but it does not – that is, not only on that. This one catholic Trinity doctrine is in fact not a fully determinate doctrine at all, but only a template, a set… Read More »Mark Edwards on Councils and the Trinity

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 10 – Why Care About Rational Reinterpretation?

Whew! That was close!

Many recent Christian philosophers have offered what I call Rational Reconstructions of apparently contradictory doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. Though I’m presently exploring criticisms of such views, let me emphasize that I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing, and I think that people with philosophical skills who are Christians ought to use them in any way which is helpful to the Christian community. At bare minimum, these folks are exploring possible views, possible ways to understand the Trinity (etc.). Getting clear about what the options are, and the costs and benefits of each, is an important kind of theoretical progress. Moreover, it shows intellectual integrity and courage, and concern for the truth.

At the end of my last post in the series, I noted that Rational Reconstructors often don’t believe their new version of the Doctrine. In any case, I’ve never seen one that insists that their version is the one which all Christians ought to believe. This latter isn’t surprising – we professors simply don’t have any authority to lay down a theory as required by any Christian community. But it is surprising that these folks are exercising some immense intellectual energy, and writing very involved and difficult pieces expounding views to which they do not commit? What is going on?

Short answer: apologetics. They’re deflecting bullets, as it were, with the theoretical equivalent of Wonder Woman’s super-duper bracelets.Read More »Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 10 – Why Care About Rational Reinterpretation?