podcast 52 – John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity, Part 1
What are the essential teachings which one must accept to be a Christian?
What are the essential teachings which one must accept to be a Christian?
“If I think of pork-products, is that a self-conscious act of thinking?”
What follows is the first of a two part post.
Part 1: The Divine Word as Divine Practical Knowledge
Part 2: If God Weren’t a Trinity, then Creatures Would Necessarily Be Created.
Part 1
In pre-Nicene days (and post-Nicene days) there was much debate about the ontological status and (narrative) identity of the Son of God. One branch of discussion focused on the Apostle John’s claim that the Son of God is the Word of God. In various places in the New Testament the Son of God is identified as the agent through whom the Father creates the world, which is equivalent with saying the Word of the Father and the Father create creatures.
From these sources a ‘Logos-theology’ was born (that you can read about in the history books). The Logos is that by which creatures are created, have their existence and persistence in existing.
Now, Henry takes up the question as to whether the Word is ‘practical knowledge’. Henry generally gets his definitions of kinds of knowledge from Aristotle. From Aristotle we learn about three kinds of knowledge: speculative knowledge, practical knowledge and productive knowledge.
Dallas Willard is one of my favorite authors, and I don’t normally go in for criticizing what he writes. But I found a great example in this (good) book (p. 122) of an idea that is fairly widespread, and which underlies a lot of social trinitarian speculation. This brief passage got me to thinking. He says, …God is love and sustains love for us from… Read More »Are persons essentially relational?
Last time, I explained that Athanasius has not made it clear how the Son ‘inherits’ divine properties from the Father. Yet even if Athanasius could explain how the Son ‘inherits’ properties from the Father, there’s still another problem. Like Arius, Athanasius believes that the Father is simple, and so anything ‘in’ the Father is, strictly speaking, identical to the Father. If the Son is going to inherit any properties from the Father, then surely he’d have to inherit them all. As Athanasius himself realizes, it’s not a question of the Son inheriting part of the Father. It’s a question of all or none.
However, there are certain properties the Son cannot inherit from the Father, on pain of contradiction. For instance, the Son cannot inherit the Father’s unbegotteness. The Son is begotten, but the Father is not, so the can’t inherit the Father’s unbegotteness without entailing a contradiction.
Read More »Arius and Athanasius, part 10 – The Father and Son can’t share all their properties (JT)
In evangelical Protestant circles – to the highest degree in apologetics, followed by theology and Christian philosophy, it is popular to denounce theological views as “heresy”. For a while now, this has struck me as a little odd, and in this post, I’ll explain why. The concept of heresy arose within Catholicism, and on traditional Catholic assumptions, it makes perfect sense to decry something as… Read More »some thoughts on heresy
“Mary cradled the Creator in her arms. ‘I never imagined God would look like that,’ she says to herself.”
Over at Parchment and Pen Michael Patton has posted a chapter on the Trinty, part of a forthcoming book called The Discipleship Book, intended to instruct new Christians.
Dear new Christians – beware. Patton is sincere, but misinformed. He thinks the Bible obviously teaches what he’s asserting, and reasons that any prior Bible-loving Christians must’ve thought likewise.
But having studied a vast amount of historical writings by Christians, I can assure you that this is demonstrably not so, even if we stick to “mainstream” Christians (so ignoring, e.g. “Arians”, Marcionites, etc.) I take no pleasure in pointing this out, and I wish it were as simple as Patton says. But facts are facts.
I’ve discussed his sort of take on the Trinty before. It is not, as Patton says in a comment, “what the Bible teaches and Christians for 2000 years have believed.” It is what (some? many?) theologians at Dallas Theological Seminary think about the Trinity. How widespread these views are, I’m not sure. But the many evangelical and other theologians riding the “social trinitarian” bandwagon would not agree with what Patton says.
Regarding what Patton holds forth as “the best we can do”, take care lest you fall into inconsistency.
You should know that some of the most brilliant Christian thinkers in the last 100 years have held many different views on just how “the” doctrine should be understood. Unfortunately, these theories are, for the most part, not consistent with one another.
Patton asserts thatRead More »Warning to New Christians
Not all engagement is good engagement.
Ten basic questions that need to be answered, and ten more advanced questions.
An interesting discussion, with some links, by philosopher Parableman Jeremy Pierce: Muslims Worshiping God But Not Worshiping God. His view, as against some recent pastors and other folks, is that yes, Muslims do refer to the being that Christians acknowledge as the one true God, when they use the word “Allah”. [Saith Jeremy]…it seems completely ludicrous to me to claim that this being that is… Read More »Allah = God?
Last time we looked at an exchange between Christian and Muslim apologists in the early 14th century, in which the Christian side, under pressure from longstanding Muslim accusations of polytheism, spells out the doctrine of the Trinity in a plainly modalistic way. This practice is ongoing, as we’ll see. Thomas F. Michel is a Jesuit priest and scholar who edited and translated the largest response… Read More »Islam-Inspired Modalism – Part 2
Is it the foundational commitment of biblical unitarians that Scripture must be inoffensive to human reason?
Respected Catholic philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso corrects some pervasive baloney about persons which theologians are still repeating, these 22 years later! The asterisk marks his footnote – this whole passage is an aside in a very rich paper of his. Out of politeness, I omit the author of the wrongheaded passage, and I’ve added some bold highlighting to the whole thing. We’ve been over some… Read More »a quote every theology student working on the Trinity or Incarnation should memorize
A conversation about whether or not the New Testament teaches “Trinity Monotheism.”
“I had come to this belief truly just through studying the Word.”
In the New Testament, is the Father God himself, or does the Father rather represent the one God?
He assumes that necessarily, any human, as such, is subject to God.
Does the Gospel According to Mark contain as hidden messages the deity of Christ and the Trinity?
If God exists necessarily, and this not because of anything else (e.g. there’s some other necessary being which necessarily causes God to exist too), then what explains this? Our friend the Maverick Philosopher urges that the only explanation is that God’s essence just is God’s existence. I disagree. I now try again to start with God’s existence, and a few essential divine attributes which should… Read More »Dialogue with the Maverick Philosopher: God is a being, not Being itself – part 8
Following an ancient tradition of mocking modalists as “patripassians”, she seems to think the biggest or the main problem with modalism is that it identifies the Father and the Son. (pp. 1, 3) On her modalist theory, they are temporal parts (person-stages) of one being, but they are not numerically identical – they are different temporal parts of God. As she observes, on this theory, “There is… no time at while f=s.” (p. 3) Thus, her theory doesn’t identify any of the persons with one another, or with God for that matter.
Many metaphysicians, she knows, reject the theory of temporal parts, and the perdurance theory of how a thing can “last” through time.
But moving on, is this theory monotheistic? She urges,
All we need to capture the spirit of monotheism is the doctrine that at any time there is exactly one God. (3)
Huh? She draws an analogy with US Presidents; at any given time, there’s one one.
But imagine this:Read More »“Sabellianism Reconsidered” Considered – Part 2