First, I suggest we stick with “SER-ber-us” because pronouncing it “Ker-ber-us” fills some people’s heads with images like these. And we can all agree, that is not a good thing. 🙂 Last time, I mentioned Bill Craig’s recent public assertion of his Cerberus analogy for the Trinity. Here’s a remix by an Islamic apologist, with snickering commentary by Reformed Christian apologist James White. I take… Read More »Craig, White, and Cerberus
Some interesting Q & A from philosopher-apologist William Lane Craig.
First, a question inspired by internet crapola, Bill Maher’s Religulous, etc:
Jesus’ story cribbed from earlier Egyptian sources?
Son, let me take you out behind the shed.
Next?
Any good analogies for understanding the Trinity?Read More »Answers from the Answer Man
There was a famous dispute between the famous unitarian Socinus and a Hungarian unitarian leader Francis David (a.k.a. Ferenc Dávid, Franciscus Davidis; 1510-79) about whether Christians should worship or pray to Jesus. Both were what I call humanitarian unitarians (Jesus did not exist before his conception, and does not have a divine nature.) This dispute went on for some time both in person and in… Read More »Francis David: Against Worshiping Jesus
When discussing Revelation 4-5 earlier in this series, I looked backwards and forwards through the book, to get a comprehensive view of this author’s theology and christology. But I overlooked something, namely this interesting little tidbit, in another throne room scene, in an interlude between some smiting. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast… Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 9 – Song of the Lamb
The extraordinary early American minister Noah Worcester (1758-1837) fought in Battle of Bunker Hill, made shoes, taught school, served in the New Hampshire legislature, campaigned unsuccessfully for pacifism, and in his spare time, wrote some really interesting philosophical theology. (In my lingo, he’s a subordinationist unitarian.)
Here are some of his thoughts on the subject of worshiping Jesus.
That the Son of God is to regarded as an object of DIVINE HONORS, is so plain from the Scriptures, that it seems extraordinary that it should even have been denied by any one who has admitted the Bible as a rule of faith and practice. …We have express declarations of the will of God. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son, that all men should HONOR the SON even as they honor the Father.” This is a sufficient warrant for men to give DIVINE HONORS to the SON of God. Angels have their warrant also; for “When he bringeth in his ONLY BEGOTTEN into the world, he saith, Let all the angels of God WORSHIP HIM.” (Noah Worcester, Bible News: Or, Sacred Truths Relating to the Living God, His Only Son, and Holy Spirit, p. 128, bold added)
I agree.
Worcester proceeds to carefully work through many arguments in this chapter with sure-footed common sense and deep familiarity with the Bible. I thought his answer to a common objection to worshiping the Son was especially interesting:
It may still be thought, that if the Son be not the self-existent God, but has been exalted by God as an object of Divine honors, then God has given his glory to another, contrary to his own word. …
[In reply,] Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 8 – Objection: I Will Not Give My Glory to Another
19th c. American minister Charles Morgridge makes an apt comment about Revelation 4-5: There is not in the Bible a clearer distinction between the only true God, and his only Son our Saviour, than is here expressed. GOD sat on the throne; the Son stood amidst the elders. GOD had in his right hand a book; the Son came and took the book out of his… Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 7 – Charles Morgridge on Revelation 4-5
And we saw, at the climax of the heavenly scene in Rev 4-5, those present in God’s throne room fall down and worship. (5:14) Whom do they worship? Both God, and the Lamb, as the songs said. (4:11, 5:11-13) But there’s an interesting textual variant. If you look in your old King James Version, which uses an inferior edition of the Greek New Testament, 5:14… Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 6 – An interesting textual corruption
If we stick with objections arising from the text of Revelation itself, perhaps the most obvious one is that raised in a comment on previous post by my friend James Anderson. Reformulated by me, it goes:
The text itself (Rev 19:10, 22:9) asserts that we should worship only God. And yes, Revelation plainly implies that Jesus should be worshiped. And so it plainly implies that Jesus is God.
One might look to one of my favorite translations, the New Living Translation, which has these two verses saying, in part: “Worship only God”.
When you look at the Greek, though, you see that it simply says “Worship God.” Not the same thing! And most translations get this right. (Even The Message and the Good News Bible get it right.)
Where does the “only” come from? From the theological agenda of the translators; they want the text to be making the argument above. So in the ESV Study Bible, which translates these phrases correctly (“Worship God.”) they feel the theological need to add this footnote:
Human beings must not worship even the angels… God alone must be worshiped. Since the Lamb is rightly worshiped (5:8-14), he is God. (p. 2497)
Interestingly, these evangelical commenters agree with those in the recent Jewish Annotated New Testament that Revelation asserts that only God should be worshiped. In their comment on 19:7-10, they assert that
It is God, not the Lamb/Jesus, who is to be worshiped. (p. 493)
And bizarrely, in their notes on chapter 5, they ignore the obvious fact that Jesus is being worshiped together with God, although they correctly note that
The heavenly song makes a clear distinction between the enthroned one and the sacrificial lamb. (p. 474)
I’m reading between the lines here, and the commenters in this book are understandably very circumspect, but I think their assumption is Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 5 – An Objection
Last time we carefully read through a heavenly scene in which Jesus is exalted to God’s side and worshiped alongside him.
We saw that it is indisputable that Revelation 4-5 holds forth Jesus as worthy of being worshiped.
But can this help us choose between the dueling arguments from the first post? Yes!
Given that we accept that Jesus ought to be worshiped, we must choose between Only God should be worshiped and Jesus isn’t God because we can’t consistently accept both of these, in addition to the claim that Jesus ought to be worshiped.
Based on our careful reading (Part 2, Part 3) of Revelation 4-5, let us ask which of these John would agree with?
Would John agree that only God should be worshiped?
Plainly not.
Last time, in chapter 4, our author (a “John” – 1:1) was granted a vision of God in heaven, receiving worship in his throne room.
In chapter 5, God – the one on the throne – is holding a sealed up scroll – a scroll which we later find out (ch. 6-9) contains his future plans. This is what the author was promised at the start of chapter 4 – that he’d be shown the future (4:1), again, something we know from Isaiah is the prerogative of God alone.
No one is found worthy to open it, and John is bummed. Someone tells him,
“Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Lamb. Who? We’ve met him before – it is Jesus, the one through whom Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 3 – Revelation 5
Congratulations to trinities contributor J.T. Paasch on his new book Divine Production in Late Medieval Trinitarian Theology: Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, now available in the U.K. I trust he’ll let us know when it comes out in the U.S. The Amazon blurb, with bolding gratuitously added by me: According to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit are… Read More »New book by J.T. Paasch
What does Revelation imply about God, Jesus, and worship? In Revelation chapter 4, the author is granted a heavenly vision: After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was… Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 2 – Revelation 4
What, if anything, is wrong with this argument? 1. Only God should be worshiped. 2. Jesus should be worshiped. 3. Therefore, Jesus is God. (1,2) Before you answer, be sure you understand the claims fully. The “only” in 1 makes a claim of quantification, which we all understand in terms of identity. In standard logic, it would be analyzed as: Wg & (x)(Wx… Read More »Worship and Revelation 4-5 – Part 1 – setup
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
Dr. Win Corduan responds to this site (which probably appears to many as a credible source). I’ve enjoyed a couple of Dr. Corduan’s books, in particular this one. Corduan continues: part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10. (Whew!) Seems that he’s finished a new edition of the book I mention above – cool! Update: new interview with Dr. Corduan:… Read More »Win Corduan compares Christ and Krishna
Given my scholarly interests in Hinduism, I had to post a link to this story about the conversion of a Reformed Christian philosopher to a form of Hinduism.
Pictured here are Krishna and his lover Radha. I take it that in Sudduth’s form of Hinduism Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu. Other Hindus consider Krishna to be the high god himself.
There is much art celebrating the love of these two.
The story for me was a bit spoiled when I watched a documentary in which a Hindu, Indian man explained that (at least on some versions) Radha is married to another, and is Krishna’s aunt. Perhaps some would object that I’m not looking at it metaphysically enough. (Update – to be fair, some Hindu sources assert them to be unrelated and married – see comment #11 below.)
In another famous episode, Krishna charms a bunch of cow-herding ladies.
I’m curious to read more about Sudduth’s conversion. How does one get from Calvin’s all-determining triune deity to Vishnu? I wonder if it is by way of fairly mainstream trinitarian modalism…
Myself, as I read Sudduth’s interesting narrative of his conversion I’m not sure where, i.e. with what sort of Christianity, he was starting from. I too have taught the Gita in an academic setting, but I have not had experiences like this:
Around 4:20am (Friday morning) September 16th, I woke suddenly from a deep sleep to the sound of the name of “Krishna” being uttered in some wayRead More »Reformed Christian Philosopher Converts to Hinduism
First, a few clarifications. By “modalist” I do not mean “Sabellian” or “monarchian.” (Those ancient catholics probably did hold to various forms of modalism, but the term is not a historical one, and can refer to other views which probably no ancient person held.) Nor do I mean modalism by definition to be heretical relative to orthodox/catholic creeds. What I mean is that at least one of these – Father, Son, Spirit – is a mode of the one God, in some sense a way that God is. That last phrase is deliberately ambiguous.
In his recent Christmas sermon the Pope said:
In all three Christmas Masses, the liturgy quotes a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, which describes the epiphany that took place at Christmas in greater detail: “A child is born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his shoulders; and this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace. Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end” (Is 9:5f.). … A child, in all its weakness, is Mighty God. A child, in all its neediness and dependence, is Eternal Father. …
God has appeared – as a child. It is in this guise that he pits himself against all violence and brings a message that is peace. (emphases and link added)
This last phrase, X has appeared as S, is ambiguous. It could mean Read More »Is the Pope a Modalist?
Pictured here is Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone (a.k.a. St. Francis of Assisi, d. 1226 ) – my photo of a 19th c. statue from southern Arizona, probably well worn from processions and general fondling. I understand that he started, or at least popularized the building of manger scenes. I remember reading his early biographies some years ago. I never could decide what to think: whether he… Read More »Merry Christmas
(continued) Unbeknownst to Brian and Rich, powerful aliens from Alpha Centuri were listening in on their conversation. The aliens thought it a shame that Rush was not a musician. After some discussion, they decided to make a band which was otherwise just like Rush, but which was itself, or rather, himself, a musician – a power trio who was a virtuoso. For starters, they copied… Read More »Rush 2.0 and Rush 3.0
“Is this your first Rush concert?” “Yes, I’m so excited.” Rich and Brian had been talking about this for months. Like geeky hard rock fans worldwide, they had long been in awe of Neal Peart’s furious and precise drumming, Geddy Lee’s dancing bass and soaring vocals, and the rich textures and screams of Alex Lifeson’s electric guitar. This was their first Rush concert, and they… Read More »Meeting Rush