Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | Email | RSS
In this third part, Dr. Branson starts by discussing what was perceived as Arius’s patrological failing: implicitly denying that fatherhood is essential to God. Dr. Branson then makes this argument:
God is a necessary and eternal being (exists at all times in all possible worlds). – Premise- If any X counts as a Father, then there is a distinct Y such that Y is the Son (Offspring) of X. – Premise (analytic & necessary truth)
- Therefore, if Fatherhood is essential to God, then it’s necessarily and eternally true that there is a Son. (1, 2)
- Fatherhood is essential to God. – Premise
- The Son is also a necessary and eternal being (exists at all times & all worlds.) (2 & 3 & the assumption that there are not different sons in different worlds.)
- Creatures are all contingent and non-eternal. (So if X is a creature, there are worlds and times where X does not exist.) – Premise
- Therefore, the Son of God is not a creature. (5,6)
- If X is not divine, X is created. – Premise
- Therefore, the Son of God is divine. (7,8)
Dr. Branson points out that this will probably drive the unitarian to deny 4, the least plausible of the premises.
He then disputes my claim that the key moment in (what I call) the unitarian to trinitarian change in catholic Christianity was the council in 381. He discusses passages in this connection from Gregory of Nazianzen, John of Damascus, and Theodore Abu Qurrah. He argues that I’m an unwitting ally of Roman Catholic theology in that I misread “the fathers” as what Dr. Branson calls “egalitarian trinitarians.”
He ends by arguing that his “monarchical trinitarianism” may be compatible with some “social” or constutition theory of the Trinity, and he urges that on my definitions, contrary to my intentions, a theory may count as both trinitarian and unitarian. In contrast, on his preferred definitions, trinitarian and unitarian are mutually exclusive.
Links for this episode:
- Part 1, Part 2
- Dr. Branson’s homepage
- Dr. Branson’s slides with his unedited audio are posted here (today’s episode covers the ond of his Part 3 and the first portion of his Part 4).
- Hilary of Poitiers
- Gregory of Nazianzus
- Select Orations, trans. Martha Vinson
- AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State
- podcast 30 – The Council of Nicea
- The Orthodox Formulas 2: The Council of Constantinople (381)
- John of Damascus
- Theodore Abu Qurrah
- God and “God” in the Bible – Ambiguous Words in the Bible – Pt-1 – Dr. Dale Tuggy
- podcast 189 – The unfinished business of the Reformation
- analytic Trinity theories
- Set Theory
- “Constitution Trinitarianism: An Appraisal”
- A formulation of Leibniz’s Law / the Indiscernibility of Identicals
- This week’s thinking music is “Fall asleep by the flash old Kiev Chant” from Chants of the Russian Orthodox Church 2.
If Trinitarianism is belief in one God but three divine persons, why would Arianism not be considered a form of Trinitarianism? As far as I know, Arius never denied the personality of the Holy Spirit.
Beau, why are creatures more contingent than sons? Or why is God’s fatherhood more dependent on an existent son, than he is dependent on an eternal creation in order to be Creator? The problem down the through the ages may be the leap from revelation to philosophy.
Maybe some of the technicalities went over my head, but from a casual listening, it basically sounds like Dr. Branson believes in a version of Unitarianism with eternal preexistence of the Son, who by virtue of sonship is not fully God in the full sense of the Father, but obviously belongs in the God category. Much as a king and a prince, the example that he gave.
Comments are closed.