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“A rebuke makes a greater impression on a discerning person than a hundred blows on a fool. ” (Proverbs 17:10) In this episode I respond to the interesting article “What about This View? How to Defend an Anti-Trinitarian Theology,” by evangelical apologist Dr. Robert M. Bowman Jr.
I start by presenting this piece completely and without interruption, and then reply to it bit by bit.
- I first distinguish between the terms “anti-trinitarian,” “non-trinitarian,” and “unitarian.”
- Then I urge that his six propositions – ones which evangelical apologists often use as a summary of “the” Trinity doctrine – in fact do not express any one doctrine, but rather provide some language which any specific Trinity theory must provide an interpretation for. To wit,
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There is one God (i.e., one proper object of religious devotion).
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This one God is a single divine being, called Jehovah or Yahweh in the Old Testament (the LORD).
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The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is God, the LORD.
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The Son, Jesus Christ, is God, the LORD.
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The Holy Spirit is God, the LORD.
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The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each someone distinct from the other two.
- As to his remaining points, I agree with three of the four, and I urge my fellow unitarian Christians should take a lot of Dr. Bowman’s advice.
- As to one of them, though, I urge that it can’t be an objection to non-trinitarian Christian theologies unless it would also provide a difficulty for just about any Protestant theology, or even for Jesus as a theologian within first-century Judaism.
Let us know what you think in the comments below, in our Facebook group, upload audio feedback for possible inclusion in a future episode of this podcast, putting the audio file here. You can also listen to this episode on Stitcher or iTunes (please subscribe, rate, and review us in either or both – directions here). It is also available on YouTube (you can subscribe here). You can support the trinities podcast by ordering anything through Amazon.com after clicking through one of our links. We get a small % of your purchase, even though your price is not increased. (If you see “trinities” in you url while at Amazon, then we’ll get it.)
Links for this episode:
- “What about This View? How to Defend an Anti-Trinitarian Theology,”
- “The Biblical Basis of the Doctrine of the Trinity“
- Dr. Bowman’s Trinity FAQ
- All irr.org pieces on the Trinity
- Dr. Bowman’s other articles at irr.org
- podcast 107 – Dr. Robert M. Bowman Jr. on triadic New Testament passages – part 1
- podcast 108 – Dr. Robert M. Bowman Jr. on triadic New Testament passages – part 2
- Defining the concept of a trinitarian
- Defining the concept of a Christian unitarian
- the evolution of my views on the Trinity
- How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament
- three-self trinitarians
- podcast 27 – Interview with Dr. William Hasker about his Metaphysics and the Tripersonal God – Part 1
- podcast 28 – Interview with Dr. William Hasker about his Metaphysics and the Tripersonal God – Part 2
- podcast 57 – Professor Richard Swinburne on the Trinity
- podcast 77 – Mr. Chad McIntosh on the Trinity
- one-self trinitarians
- Mysterians at work in Dallas
- Feser’s Negative Mysterian Defense of the Trinity
- “On Positive Mysterianism“
- relative-identity trinitarianism
- 10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #6 get a date – part 1
- 10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #6 get a date – part 2
- podcast 124 – a challenge to “Jesus is God” apologists
- podcast 25 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 1
- podcast 26 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 2
- Who Should Christians Worship? (paper)
- podcast 85 – Heretic! Four Approaches to Dropping H-Bombs
some biblical unitarian sources
- Belsham, A Calm Inquiry Into The Scripture Doctrine Concerning The Person of Christ
- Buzzard and Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound
- Buzzard, Jesus was not a Trinitarian
- Christie, Dissertations on the Unity of God
- Graeser, et. al. One God and One Lord
- Navas, Divine Truth or Human Tradition
- Various, Sixteen American Unitarian Tracts
- Wilson, Scripture Proofs and Scriptural Illustrations of Unitarianism
- This week’s thinking music has been “Desert Castles” by Little Glass Men.
I enjoyed your podcast 125. But I think you went astray when you started talking about Jesus not being able to find others who shared his beliefs. We are talking about the Nature and Person of God. Jesus certainly could find someone who fully understood and accepted what he believed about God, the Father. That view was and IS UNITARIAN! He doesn’t have to agree with everything else they taught. Even a true church, given our imperfections, is not going to be fully inline with God’s Word or thinking. We are going to swing to the right too far or to the left too far. I think Bowman had a good point about there needing to be a Church. Now that could be future as well. But at some point there needs to be a body of believers.
Would you help me on one point? I understand your desire to avoid unhelpful, inappropriate extremes. However…it seems to me the Bible promotes the uniqueness of God as the being who is deserving of the highest worship. It also speaks against elevating other creatures by lavishing them with the same worship as God. How, then, could someone who is a convinced unitarian not be anti-trinitarian, instead of non-trinitarian? Shouldn’t it really bother a unitarian that the vast bulk of the self-identifying church self-consciously gives worship to Jesus Christ, understanding him to be “very God” of “very God”? I appreciate your restrained, professorial tone. However, if your endeavor is more than a sterile, intellectual exercise, shouldn’t there be a part of you that is truly disappointed, yea, even outraged, that there is such misplaced worship occurring at such a vast scale? I am trying to understand your approach and place it in a practical framework that has moral coherence. Your “non-trinitarian” detachment, it seems to me, is unfitting, if what you claim is true. Help me on this.
Hi – good questions.
I am plenty bothered by people confusing Jesus together with God, believe me. But I think many are simply inconsistent – at one moment, they identify them, then distinguish them, then back to identity. Confusion is widespread. Not something to get mad about, but something to help people see past.
If by “worship” you *mean* some honor only God himself should get, then no, we should not worship Jesus. But they Bible, generally, doesn’t talk about worship that way. And it’s mighty hard to say just what that sort of honor (appropriate to God alone) beyond the believe that this is the unique God. What’s done to honor God, is also done to honor Jesus in Philippians 2 and Revelation 5.
My position on God, Jesus, and worship is best expressed here or in the paper by the same name: https://trinities.org/blog/who-should-christians-worship/ See there for my scriptural answers to the assumption that worshiping the human Jesus must be idolatry or at any rate, against God’s will.
I assume that the reason God puts up with so many confusing him with his Son, is that in fact he does want the Son to be worshiped.
Thanks for the reply and links. One thing is certain: after regularly listening to your podcast, I won’t be able to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy…God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity” ever again in quite the same way!
“I assume that the reason God puts up with so many confusing him with his Son, is that in fact he does want the Son to be worshiped.”
It can also be a slap and spit in the face by Satan. Or an attempt to undermine Jesus loyalty to God while in heaven. Satan tried numerous times to get Jesus to seek his own glory. Now I do know that some, but not all socinians, reject the idea of demons. In such a case, guess these are not possibilities. But remember, the Bible says “You must not have any other gods against my face.” If it is improper, it is improper. Also Jesus whose loyalty to his Father is intense and like a fire, will not be flattered by misplaced affections.
Jacob,
For clarification, not all Christians believe that “demons” refer to “evil (fallen) angels” who participated in some kind of prehistoric rebellion against God. Some would interpret passages that mention “satan” and “demons” differently but certainly don’t “reject” that the biblical writers spoke of those things.
For example, the “satan” and “evil spirits” mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures were standing members of God’s heavenly host who freely consulted with God and acted with His authorization to test human beings (e.g. 1 Kings 22:19-21; Job 2:1-7). This kind of biblical evidence doesn’t fit the Medieval notion of an angelic rebellion.
Thanks Rivers,
I’m familiar with the basics. I’ve talked different groups of socinians–some who believe in demons and some who don’t. I agree with you at 1 Kings. I don’t agree with you at Job. Angelic satan there obviously is not acting in accord to God’s will as the one in 2 Kings.
Jacob,
What do you do with Job 1:11-12 and Job 2:5-7 where God Himself gave the “satan” permission to harm Job?
How can you say this activity is “not acting in accord with God’s will”? What’s the difference between God authorizing the “lying spirit” angel to tempt Ahab (1 Kings 22:19-21) or God authorizing the “satan” angel to cause harm to Job?
Not to answer for Dale, but for me, and probably other Unitarians, it doesn’t bother us that much becuase most Trinitarian Christians aren’t really that trinitarian, many dont’ really know anything about it other than they are to believe the Word, many are functional unitarians.
If pressed, they are also going to Hell. If belief in the Trinity was really required, maybe 100 people will make it to heaven!
So, in the interests of Dr. Bowman’s #2 (with which you agreed)… On your Christian unitarian view, who was Jesus, what did he do, and how was he able to do it? I haven’t managed to find answers to those questions on your blog on my own, but there’s a lot of material here and I’ve probably just missed it somehow.
Ron,
My understanding is that the apostles were teaching that Jesus Christ was an ordinary human being (Hebrews 2:14) who had a miraculous human birth (Luke 1:35) and received an immeasurable amount of holy spirit power that remained with him throughout the time of his public ministry (John 1:32-34; John 3:34-35).
Through obedience and suffering, the human Jesus was perfected and saved from death by God the Father (Hebrews 5:7-9). Therefore, he became the propitiation for the sins of the world (Hebrews 2:17) and an advocate before God on behalf of those who obey him (1 John 2:1-2).
Thing is, I have trouble seeing how someone who is born of a virgin, is without sin, atones for the sins of humanity, and can bestow eternal life could be considered “an ordinary human being”. Seems to me that’s kind of what got the whole idea of the Incarnation rolling. The Word made flesh, in whom dwelt all the fullness of God. I don’t think the apostles saw him as an ordinary human being.
If the doctrine of the Incarnation is the wrong way to understand who Jesus was, then I’d like to know a better way.
Ron,
I suppose “ordinary” seems like an understatement on account of the circumstances you’ve pointed out. However, I’m just using it in an ontological sense (Hebrews 2:14). I agree that things like “virgin birth” and “knew no sin” and “resurrection” are extraordinary circumstances.
With regard to John 1:14, I don’t think the writer intended any notion of “Incarnation.” I think “the word became (i.e. was) flesh” is just the way the writer of the 4th Gospel associated the “word of [eternal] life” (cf. 1 John 1:1) with the specific “flesh” (i.e. human being, Jesus Christ) who embodied the implications of what he was teaching during the time he was among his disciples. John 1:14 is explained in 1 John 1:1-2.
It was the human Jesus who said “he who believes my word (LOGOS) has eternal life” (John 5:24) and “the life of the world is my flesh (SARX)” (John 6:51). This language isn’t about “Incarnation”, it is about “immortality” (which was promised to human beings, Titus 1:2).
The unique Son of God, God’s Messiah, miraculously conceived.
He did everything the NT says he did.
He was able to do this because God was working with and through him, and filled him with his spirit without measure.
How’s that for straightforward? 🙂
It may help to add these negative points: I hold that the traditional arguments for two-natures are all unsound. And I think the idea that if he doesn’t have a divine nature then he’s an impotent “mere man” is very wrongheaded. Everything he did, everything in the Messiah job description, can and was done by a real human being, with of course God’s constant hand.
No! No! He was a God-Man! He just forgot things from time to time in his Human nature for some reason. Indeed, I believe in a God-Man who could foresee the future, read hearts, perform the supernatural but forgot the day and the hour! Some how, his flesh couldn’t handle that knowledge and he had to relearn obedience. And Roman, I believe in an Immortal God who can die! Yes indeed! My faith is STRONG!
Well, it’s succinct. But unfulfilling. 😉
He was born of a virgin. He was without sin. He atoned for the sins of the world. He rose from the dead after three days. He is now lord of the universe. From my perspective, “God filled him with his spirit without measure” is no less mysterious an explanation than the Incarnation. And it raises questions of its own, like: if God filling a man with his spirit can keep him sinless, why didn’t he just do that with Adam? Or all the rest of us since?
Well Adam was tempted and gave in, Jesus was tempted and did’nt, both started out sinless without sin unlike those descended from Adam.
Was Jesus not a descendant of Adam? He had a human mother who was a descendant of Adam. Does the Bible claim he wasn’t a descendant of Adam? If he wasn’t, in what sense is he human, given that in the Bible Adam is the progenitor of the human race?
And again: If Adam and Jesus both start from the same point, i.e. miraculously created and sinless, then why did Adam sin and Jesus not? What was the difference? Why couldn’t Adam resist temptation, especially since he didn’t grow up in a world filled with evil like Jesus did? If the answer is “God filled Jesus with his spirit” then — if that’s all it took — why didn’t God fill Adam likewise and prevent the whole business from going off the rails in the first place? And what does that phrase even mean, anyways??
The objection raised to the Incarnation seems to be “it creates logical problems!” and defenders’ appeals to some things just being mysterious are waved off as unsatisfactory. But I’m not seeing the superiority of the unitarian approach in this regard.
(And, just for the record, the idea of a single, sinless progenitor of the human race has massive scientific, logical, and exegetical problems of its own. If your theology depends on it, you’re swallowing a camel much larger than the Incarnation…)
To be clear, I take an “Arian” theology, I believe in the incarnation, just not of Yahweh, but rather of his first created logos.
His mother was descendant of Adam, but if his life was created inside her by Yahweh, he is not a descendant of Adam in the physical sense (perhaps partially through mary, but he is a human, because he has human DNA, he is born of a woman, he has a human brain and so on and so forth.
Adam sinned and Jesus did not because of free will, one freely chose to rebel against God, one didn’t, I believe Jesus was actually tempted, it was an option for him to rebel, he didn’t, Adam had an option to stay faithful, he didn’t. I’m an open theist if you can’t tell :).
If by incarnation you mean incarnation of Yahweh, then yeah, it has logical problems, not only logical problems its a logically impossibility, and exegetical problems, in fact it’s an exegetical impossibility.
I’ll have to go back and find it and post it here. I always realized this truth but was shocked when William Lane Craig admitted that if God were a material object he would be an idol! Go Figure! And yet they believe in “God” Incarnate! lol Now how his “disciples” and hundreds of “others” saw this idol and lived to write about it another topic.
Here are WLC words: “Yeah, this is where I was most disappointed in her, this really degenerates, Kevin, to the level of the village atheist who says, I can’t see God, I can’t hear God, I can’t touch God, therefore God doesn’t exist. I mean, that’s so embarrassingly bad. If you could touch and see and hear God then God would be a finite physical object; he would be in effect an idol, and not the transcendent creator and designer of the universe. ”
What is even more bad is that you don’t realize the implications of what you just said. AND YOU SAID IT OUT LOUD FOR EVERYONE TO HEAR!
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dr-craigs-response-to-atheist-mom
“The objection raised to the Incarnation seems to be “it creates logical problems!”
No, the most fundamental problem that biblical unitarians like me are concerned with is that Incarnation-theories simply don’t best explain the texts. The concerns with implied contradictions are there too, yes, but of course, those are not separable from interpretive issues. When we have a reading that seems self-contradictory, or contradictory to other things which we know – that’s a red flag that our interpretation has gone wrong.
RonH,
I generally agree with Dale’s response.
For some Biblical Unitarians, the problem with the Incarnation doctrine is that it’s based entirely upon accepting a particular translation and interpretation of John 1:14 (that is not the only reasonable option), as well as isolating the language in John 1:1-3 from the rest of the 4th Gospel and forcing it to infer some notion of Preexistence for “the word.”
A reasonable exegesis of the entire Prologue can now be offered without any notion of either Preexistence or Incarnation. The same human Jesus who is identified with “the word” (LOGOS) in John 1:14 is the one identified with “the word” (LOGOS) in John 1:1 and 1 John 1:1.
RonH – I’m inclined to stick to the explicit teachings of the apostles, and to resist unwarranted speculations. If you are arguing that Jesus must be God himself, or that he must be “fully divine” because he never sinned – sorry. Those seem like non-sequiturs to me. To say that what I said is “no less mysterious than the Incarnation”… well, that’s quite a statement. I think we need to have a conversation about the long agonies over that c. 150-451. My experience is that evangelicals (I’m assuming you’re one – forgive me if I assume too much) don’t appreciate those many problems. More on those, God willing, in future trinities podcasts – both defenders and detractors of the official 451 formulation.
I didn’t at all argue that Jesus must be God because he was sinless. The Incarnation is a possible explanation for his sinlessness, though I don’t know that it necessarily follows from it. And, frankly, I don’t find that “God filled him with his spirit without measure” is a better explanation. The Incarnation is a hugely powerful idea, and makes intuitive sense — though logically paradoxical. I’m open to a better story, but I have to be persuaded that it’s actually a better one.
As for the “explicit teaching of the apostles” vs “unwarranted speculations”… Well, identifying what constitutes “unwarranted speculation” is most of the problem, isn’t it? While it does seem to me that the official formulations try to say too much sometimes, I don’t think they’re entirely off base either. I am persuaded by N. T. Wright that the overreach problems predominately stem from a Gentile church trying to interpret Jesus’ life and words from a 3rd-5th century Greco-Roman perspective, rather than a 1st century Jewish one. For example, from this article:
I only know a little bit about the early controversies… I’ve had Pelikan’s first volume of “The Christian Tradition” on my shelf for years, but just haven’t gotten to it. But I know more than the average evangelical, and appreciate that the development of Christian doctrine was a messy, political business. I’ve heard several of your podcasts on the early creeds, and would enjoy more material along those lines. I’m inclined to agree that the conversation shouldn’t be over. But I also suspect that a faithful reading of the text in its first century Jewish context will still leave us with a doctrine of Incarnation.
Have you interacted with any of N. T. Wright’s arguments on Christology?
Excellent podcast. Well done!
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