Steve Hays vs. Lexicons, deep thoughts on OT “binitarianism”

Not sure it is a good idea, but in this post, I’ll engage with the would-be apologist Slanderin’ Steve Hays about God’s “spirit” in the OT. He and a few readers went into a proof-text dumping fit in response to what I say about God’s “spirit” in the Bible here, #7. They are so sure that the deity and personality are easily derivable from the NT, that they don’t really engage the other point of view, but just congratulate themselves on their imagined text-dump win. Trying to get them to actually think about this topic, I said in a com box,

In the interest of moving the discussion forward, let us honestly consider this: In the OT, is God’s “spirit/Spirit” supposed to be a self in addition to God? Why or why not?

Hays whines,

The question is slanted because it assumes something has already been established–the existence of the one God–and in comparison with that datum, is the Spirit a self in addition to God? But whether we should parcel it out that way is the very issue in dispute. Is the one God a given, in contrast to which the Spirit is an additional self? But the whole question is the relation of the Spirit to God.

No, there’s nothing “slanted” about the question. OT monotheism is as clear as can be – the one true God there, the only creator, is YHWH. Now also, there is talk of his “Spirit” or “spirit” – which is just a bit less clear, all grant. So, what to make of that?

Let’s bracket all our preconceptions about OT theism. Suppose we’re reading the OT for the very first time. We know nothing about the history of Christian or Jewish interpretation. We’re a blank slate in that regard.

When we begin reading about Yahweh, Elohim, El Shaddai, and God’s Spirit, we’re open to a polytheistic interpretation. We have no prior expectation that the OT is monotheistic. When we read about “angels” in Genesis or the Pentateuch, our first impression might be that angels are minor gods, celestial emissaries, like Hermes. Indeed, aren’t angels called “sons of god(s)”? Well, that’s consistent with father gods who beget offspring.

A pointless exercise, I think, because basic reading comprehension very quickly delivers the monotheism I mentioned above. Hays muddies the waters by bringing up the lesser elohim (deities) there. But as I explain here and here, those are perfectly consistent with monotheism.

Tuggy reduces the Spirit to a personification of a divine attribute, mode, action, or part of a being/entity–rather than a self/being/entity (his lingo). But from the standpoint of comparative mythology, that’s a false dichotomy. Apollo’s the god of prophecy, Athena’s the goddess of wisdom, Aphrodite’s the goddess of eros.

In paganism, particular attributes or actions pair off with particular gods. The Greeks didn’t think Athena was a personification of wisdom, but the divine, personal source of wisdom. They didn’t think Apollo personified oracular inspiration. Rather, he was the divine, personal source of oracular inspiration. Aphrodite didn’t merely symbolize erotic passion. She was a physical exemplar. So there’s no reason to think Tuggy is reading an ancient text the way ancient readers view it.

Our would-be apologist has trouble staying on point. It is not relevant, nor is there any obvious criticism of my position, in the fact that ancient polydeistic systems associated various deities with various human concerns, like art, war, reproduction, wisdom, music, etc.

In Gen 1, the name of God (Elohim) is plural. Is that polytheistic? Remember, Tuggy doesn’t think we should filter the text through historical theology. At the outset, a reader who’s starting from scratch has no prior objection that interpretation.

This is a pop apologetics junk argument. No, that elohim often has a singular meaning, despite its plural structure, is shown by its use with singular verbs and singular personal pronouns. When it was used to mean “gods” instead of “God,” the accompanying words would be plural. Not confusing, really, any more than is our word “pants.” Thus, there’s not even a semblance of a hint here of “plurality within God.” That’s merely projected onto the texts.

In addition, Elohim speaks to someone (v26). Who’s the audience? In ancient Near Eastern creation stories, you have examples of one god addressing another god.

Most commenters now think that this is the divine council, the elohim (deities) – we would say angels – which attend God. More on the divine council here.

And in Gen 1, there are two agents, two characters: Elohim and his Spirit. If you came to the text with no theological presuppositions, you might well infer that this is a conversation between two primordial gods.

Nope, not two characters! That’s not how an ancient reader would take Genesis 1:2. He would assume that in some sense God has a body, and then like us, he also has a spirit – the unseen power, the source of life or the inner being. There is no self-to-self interaction here, e.g. conversation or interpersonal cooperation, or other signs to indicate that elohim is one self and his “spirit” or breath is another.

As you continue reading through the Pentateuch and the OT, certain interpretive options drop out of consideration. There’s a running indictment against idolatry. There’s polemical theology directed at the pantheons of Israel’s pagan neighbors. So you may have to modify your preliminary impressions. Angels are creatures rather than minor gods, the offspring of a father god or gods.

I don’t think most ancient readers would make a clear distinction between creatures and minor deities. These latter typically derive from other deities, and ultimately from the high God.

Yet in OT representations, the Spirit isn’t heavenly creature like angels are creatures. The Spirit is a heavenly agent on the divine side of the creature/Creator divide. The action is more like coming out of God.

Oy. That silly, Athanasian “on the divine side” rhetoric – a classic weasel phrase. I need to do a whole post on that some time. For now: notice why he adopts this odd phrase here – by talking abstractly about “the divine side,” this leaves it as an open question whether or not this “spirit” is the same self as God, or a self in addition to God. Convenient! But supposedly, he’s arguing that in the OT, one might well think that the spirit of God is a someone in his own right, a self in addition to God.

Finally, notice that he’s got something right there – that which is done by God’s spirit, is done by God. Just like what is done by Steve’s spirit is done by Steve. It’s a truism, yes – which he falls back on after his wheel-spinning “side” rhetoric. It makes it sound like his overall point is obvious. But of course, it is not. Countless readers, Jewish, Christian, and otherwise, think that God’s “spirit” in the Jewish Bible is not supposed to be a self in addition to God. It is, rightly, the default view.

Dale: And, since all NT authors were avid readers of the OT, how should this affect how we understand their spirit-talk?

If OT theism can be binitarian, then NT theism can be Trinitarian. Father/Son duality as well as God/Spirit duality. In Scripture the action alternates between these three major players.

What, pray tell, does it mean to say that OT theology is “binitarian”? Serious question. I assume, by analogy with “trinitarian,” that it means that there are two “Persons” in the OT (the Father and the Spirit?) which share an ousia. In my book What is the Trinity? chapter 7, I discuss nine things which “same ousia” might mean. Until our would-be apologist specifies which he means, we don’t even have an intelligible view here, which we might look into the OT to try to find. He’s just got traditional catholic language, and he’s hoping that the OT somehow gets one part way there. But “where” is “there”? I mean, what sort of ousia-sharing does he have in mind? I really don’t know. But then, none of us is in a position to see whether or not this is to be found taught or presupposed or even hinted at in the OT. Past experience has taught me that Steve Hays is proudly and defiantly confused on this topic; he has no one interpretation of the traditional catholic Trinity language, as best as I can tell. He usually just trots out a few idiosyncratic analogies, like fractals, which seem not to help, and then go back on the verbal offensive.

Dale: My view is that God’s spirit is his unseen power, which empowered prophets, and even Jesus, and in these last days is given to believers. But “the holy spirit” or “God’s spirit” can in various places refer to God, his power, or even to Jesus once or twice. Biblical spirit-talk is messy; it does make it harder to get clear on this issue. I recommend this non-polemical, careful investigation by pastor Sean Finnegan.

Steve: Let’s play along with that representation for argument’s sake. Does Tuggy think God’s power, being God’s power, is worshipful? To take a comparison, does Tuggy think divine love or divine justice is worthy of our adoration?

Hard to see what he is driving at here. We worship God, yes, because he is loving and just, yes. Do we worship God’s lovingness and God’s justice – in a manner of speaking. But properly, it is a self who is the object of worship, not his properties.

[When Steve demanded to know God’s proper name in the Bible, Dale said: “YHWH.”]

[Steve]: “Yahweh” is not a proper name like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, or Joseph. Indeed, the meaning of the Hebrew word remains an enigma to Hebraists, but in any event, it functions as a designator for God in his capacity as a covenant lord. In Scripture, divine names function as epithets.

No, it is a proper name. Evidently, our would-be apologist is reasoning backwards here – if God is tripersonal, he ought not have a proper name, which would suggest that he’s a single person. But, this is not what the scholars say. He may be assuming here that a proper name can’t have a meaning, but of course, many OT and NT names do have meanings, e.g. Immanuel, Joshua/Jesus.

“Lexicons? Who needs ’em?”

[Dale: Not that an obvious self in a text has to have one a proper name. Personal pronouns are plenty…]

[Steve:] Personal nouns are used for the Spirit of God.

Right. And by themselves, out of context, that would be good evidence for thinking that the Spirit is a self. But, here we have to ask, if the part is being put for the whole – if it is being described personally because it is the spirit of a person – a kind of personification. E.g. “My little friend here [points to fist] is going to teach you a lesson.”

[Dale]…as are titles which virtually function like names, e.g. adonai, elohim, el, ho theos, ho kurios (when this is not Jesus)

[Steve] They function like names the way having characters named Fox and Badger in fables function. They stand for a genus. Same thing with “Adam” in Gen 1, which means “man” rather than a proper name in Gen 2-3.

Um, no. Those words, generally, don’t refer to a kind or genus. Typically in the OT “the Lord” (adonai), and “God” (elohim) refer to the one god YHWH. And in the NT “God” (ho theos) is almost always God, aka God the Father. Somewhat confusingly, although not too confusingly, as I explain here, “the Lord” (ho kurios) in the NT can mean either God or his Son – the context almost always makes clear which is meant, that God. As many writers have pointed out, the ancient un-hellenized Hebrews were not big on metaphysics. Of course, I agree that they had general concepts like man and deity.

God can’t have proper names in the sense that humans, angels, or pet animals have proper names. God is not the kind of entity that has, or can have, multiple instances.

Bizarre free-wheeling here. Kids, if you’re going to do apologetics, do you homework first. Don’t just pop off and try to one-up the other guy. It’s no good to insist that God can’t have a proper name, when the reference books say that in the OT he does! That second sentence – is that supposed to be the reason for the first? If so, it is a wild non sequitur. Just because God can’t have a true peer, it doesn’t follow that he can’t have a proper name. Nor does it follow that other beings make be like him in kind, though not full peers – e.g. men, angels.

Ruach/pneuma is a pregnant designation, exploiting multiple connotations:

i) In the biblical worldview, “spirits” are personal agents (e.g. God, ghosts, angels, demons).

ii) It suggests immateriality.

iii) Breath is a principle of biological life. The Spirit is the agent of life.

iv) Speech. The spoken word. The Spirit is the agent of prophecy

Notice the obvious usage that he leaves out in this list – “spirit” as the inner part or aspect of a human person, often standing in for the person himself, so that what, e.g. your spirit feels is just what you feel.

And both Testaments portray God’s Spirit doing things only a rational agent can do (e.g. Jn 14:26; 16:8-15).

Agreed. As I said,

Dale: In trying to understand what this “S/spirit” is supposed to be, both sides have to take some passages in ways other than their prima facie senses. When the holy spirit is poured out, or when it is described as a power, the trinitarian decides that really a self is being talked about there as if it were not a self (the opposite of personification).

Steve: As I already pointed out, Scripture uses inanimate metaphors for Yahweh/Elohim.

Right, e.g. Rock. Who could disagree?

Dale: The other side just does this for the self-like passages. No inconsistency either way, Steve – just trying to a consistent theology out of the texts. Stop trying to go for the cheap shots, and get serious on this topic.

Naturally, our little polemicist responds with… personal insults, which I delete, to save him further embarrassment.

Dale: In a forthcoming paper, Richard Swinburne argues that the Trinity is not deducible from the Bible precisely because readings on which God’s “spirit” is not an additional divine self are more plausible – this, from a determined defender of social trinitarianism! So much for trying to paint this as a wacky claim of cultists and rascally biblical unitarians. Many, many serious exegetes have read the NT this way.

Steve: He’s a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. So he punts to tradition. Exegetical theology is not his forte.

True. But my point is made. He would no doubt cite numerous exegetes for this point, be they Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox, liberal or conservative.

Dale: Because I’m pointing out various sorts of spirit-talk in the Bible, you ought not infer that I am inconsistent on what I think God’s spirit is.

Steve: Tuggy’s the one who made a blanket claim:

#7. The “spirit of” a self is not supposed to be a different self than that self.

I’m responding to his own formulation.

Well, reacting to it. Notice that the point was not about all uses of “spirit” terms, but rather of the idiom of “my spirit,” “his spirit,” or “God’s spirit.” Just talk of “a spirit” can in some cases be a ghost, angel, demon, or deity. But that’s not to the point. Just because OT and NT agree on what God’s spirit is supposed to be, it doesn’t follow that our authors will always uses the spirit-words in that one way, for the inner aspect or part of a self, as opposed to his body.

A lesson for would-be apologists here; don’t pounce on your opponent so fast that you can’t take time to look things up in standard reference sources. Both your misinformation and your lack of self control reflect poorly on the cause you think you’re serving.