Here’s a very interesting interview with probably the greatest living Christian philosopher. Like many of my peers, I’m a big fan. Read the whole thing to see why I picked a teapot. Here are some relevant bits (with my own bolding):
I take atheism to be the belief that there is no such person as the God of the theistic religions.
The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might — e.g., having them boiled in oil — God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures.
The most important ground of belief is probably not philosophical argument but religious experience. Many people of very many different cultures have thought themselves in experiential touch with a being worthy of worship. They believe that there is such a person, but not because of the explanatory prowess of such belief.
Thomas Nagel, a terrific philosopher and an unusually perceptive atheist, says he simply doesn’t want there to be any such person as God. And it isn’t hard to see why. For one thing, there would be what some would think was an intolerable invasion of privacy: God would know my every thought long before I thought it.
Is Plantinga a trinitarian? (definition) Sic et non:
- Sic. Plantinga is indeed a trinitarian, but as a Protestant, he’s speaking in a biblical mode (and not a post-4th c. catholic mode) where “God” normally names the Father, one “person” of the Trinity. As he thinks that the “persons” – at least the Father and Son really are selves, he is not a one-self trinitarian, but probably a three-selfer, like his brother.
- Non. But if he were a three selfer, he’d think the one “God” was a group of three divine selves, or a whole composed of three selves (which isn’t itself a self). But he thinks the one God is a self, and that this self is the Father. (John 17:3) The Son isn’t the one God, but is someone else, God’s Son, as in the New Testament. So, he’s a unitarian (definition) not a trinitarian.
Which is true? I don’t know. If I had to bet, I’d bet on Sic. But if that’s so (and I’m not saying that it is, but only raising the question) I would object that he’s talking in ways which can only make people think that the one God just is (is identical to) the Father, and not the Trinity – something he takes to be false. If it ain’t so, I’d congratulate him for being a good Protestant and choosing the Bible when it contradicts catholic tradition.
I do feel fairly sure about the following things: by “person” here he means self, and not mode, mask, personality, or manifestation, etc. – not something which is a way a self is. He agrees with the NT that Father and Son love one another. And he does not think Father and Son are the same self, or modes of the same self, or that the Son is a mode of the Father. And he agrees that the Father and Son are numerically distinct, because they do and have differed.
But these are held in common by many “social” (three self) trinitarians and by biblical unitarians of various sorts. Hence, my curiosity.
Dale
Trinitarians frequently do this in conversation – to the point that one is tempted to ask
“are you talking about the alleged ‘triune’ God, or the God who is the Father of Adam, Moses, Abraham and Isaac – and our Lord Jesus Christ”?
I truly believe that they have confused themselves!
Blessings
John
I too have been struck by how often Plantinga talks in the ways you illustrate above. But where more subtlety is called for in his publications, he has been known to make the appropriate distinctions. For instance, in his book with Tooley on “Knowledge of God” he speaks of God as a person, but in the first footnote mentions that the “Christian doctrine of the Trinity introduces complications” (implying that he affirms the doctrine) and that he will use “‘God’ as a name of the first person of the Trinity.”
Thanks for that reference, Tully. Yeah, Swinburne clearly does that too sometimes – uses “God” not for the Trinity, but rather for the Father. The thing is, all the NT assumes that the Father and YHWH are one and the same, while later trinitarian tradition identifies the one God with the Trinity. Using “God” ambiguously sort of just splits the difference, and confuses, it seems to me.
Update: by email Dr. Plantinga basically confirms that I guessed right. I don’t feel free to share more; he is very welcome to comment here if he wants to.
God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures.
It is always interesting how Social Trinitarians seem to ignore the misfit between what they proclaim when the say: “There’s no love unless God Himself comes down to suffer in order to save mankind;” and when they get the opportunity to relate the story, it wasn’t God who suffered physically by being crucified. His son was crucified which caused God to suffer vicariously (as Platinga seems to spontaneously admit above). In fact, the insistence that love can only be shown by suffering as man is very short-sighted if one considers that the Father didn’t die; or that the (personal) Holy Spirit didn’t suffer and die. By the argument above, neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit had such sovereign love, since they didn’t suffer and die themselves!
The most important ground of belief is probably not philosophical argument but religious experience. Many people of very many different cultures have thought themselves in experiential touch with a being worthy of worship. They believe that there is such a person, but not because of the explanatory prowess of such belief.
This is very interesting from a psychological perspective, since Platinga seems speak intuitively here, and obviously not from a philosophical/doctrinal position. And notice how the same God he experiences as God is the one who sent someone else to die for the world’s sins. Implicitly, experientially and spontaneously, Platinga does seem to default to a One Self Supreme Being, contra a three-self trinity.
I think Dale highlights a real problem here. Trinitarians, at least Social Trinitarians, should not casually say things like “by ‘theism’ I mean there is such a person as God, and he…” etc. It’s misleading, at least if they mean to refer to the ST God. I haven’t see any good replies to this by Social Trinitarians. Interpreting such statements non-literally is not satisfactory.
Your reading too much into his comments. It is quite common for trinitarians to make references to God as one person the primary in this case, the Father. I find Unitarians do this quite often with Trinitarian scholars, theologians, or even in casual every day encounters. There is such a strong desire to transform or morph Trinitariians into a Unitarian Christology that they will prooftext a Trinitarian into their ontological realm. It’s wishin upon a star theological supposiitions like this that realy compromises so many Unitarians and makes for shoddy scholarship and asumptions much like the Jehovah’s Witness “Trinity” (anti) booklet which used the theological assertions of Alvan Lamson on reading the early church with wanting eyes.
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