In the Facebook group yesterday I had an interesting exchange with Andrew Schumacher, who you may remember from podcast 251. He was raised in a biblical unitarian group but has changed his mind and now holds a trinitarian theology. Our friend Carlos asked him:
…which Person is speaking in Isa 44:24?” [“Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth…”]
Andrew: “Doesn’t matter. God acts and speaks as one quite a bit. Scripture affirms God is one. It also affirms God is three by identifying three distinct persons as God. Trinitarians just believe all of Scripture. Isaiah 44:24 is definitely proof against Arianism, since it proves only Yahweh was involved in creation. This is what the Trinity affirms.”
God is one AND God is three? That looks like an apparent contradiction (because being three entails not being one). But leave that aside. I wanted to focus on this idea of speaking (i.e. intentionally communicating). Like creating, this is an intentional action, and it is selves which do those.
Carlos: so the Trinity is speaking in Isa 44:24?
Andrew Schumacher : God is speaking. We are supposed to learn that Yahweh alone is creator. Beyond that is speculation.
Notice that this is a weasel answer. He senses danger in saying that God the Trinity speaks – so he just says “God” is speaking, by which I think he means that it is one or more of the Three divine Persons. Or is it the Trinity as such? He thinks this is a modest, non-speculative answer. But it leaves open whether the Trinity is a “he” or an “it.”
Andrew: Isaiah also reveals these words of God in 48:16: (LEB): “Draw near to me; hear this! I have not spoken in secrecy from the beginning; “from the time it came to be, there I have been; And now the Lord Yahweh has sent me and his Spirit.” See? Both one and three.
Of course, it is contentious to assert that this text assumes that God is “three”! Note that a majority of translations end the quote from YHWH before that last sentence, the last sentence being spoken by the prophet. (Hence the new “Thus says the LORD…” in the next verse.) And again, the “one and three” line looks like mystery-mongering. But here’s where I chime in regarding God speaking:
Dale: Andrew, speaking is the action of a person/self. Either (1) you don’t literally mean that the Trinity per se is speaking, but just each of the three, or you think the Trinity is, as such, speaking. But then, it, or rather he, is a self. So then, is it a fourth, the “Persons” being the other three, or is it the only self here, as the “Persons” are something like personalities or ways God eternally lives?
For this post, let me expand this into an argument. Call it the Quaternity Argument:
- If something intentionally communicates using a human language, it is a self.
- According to the Bible, God intentionally communicates using various human languages.
- Therefore according to the Bible, God is a self. (1,2)
- According to the Bible, God is the Trinity.
- Therefore according to the Bible, the Trinity is a self. (3,4)
- Each Person of the Trinity is a self.
- None of these are numerically identical: Father, Son, Spirit, Trinity.
- Each of these is divine: Father, Son, Spirit, Trinity.
- Therefore, there are at least four divine selves. (5-8)
Quaternity? Yuck! No Christian will accept this, right? I think any Christian should figure out where this argument goes wrong.
Obviously, my way out of this argument is to deny 4.
What is Mr. Schumacher’s way out? Or does he endorse the argument as sound? As I see it he is committed to 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8. Does he get off the bus at 6? Here’s how he answered my challenge in its briefer form:
Andrew Schumacher: Dale Tuggy I agree. Speaking is something a person does. That’s why I have written and spoken about a different way of explaining the way God is both one and three.
Here he endorses 1 and 4. He continues,
One being/three persons is true, I think, but doesn’t explain everything. Like why is God so often described as a single Person, at least as it pertains to pronouns, while never actually being explicitly described as “only” one person? Well, one explanation is that God is one Person in one sense, and three in another sense.
OK, this just sounds like endorsing the whole argument above as sound, and hoping that distinguishing different kinds of persons/selves will make 9 palatable to Christians. I’d be interested to hear what other trinitarians have to say about that!
We are fine with this kind of talk in lots of other areas, like if I had a glass with exactly 6 ice cubes in it. Is it true or false to say I have 3 ice cubes in the glass? It depends on the sense.
At least three: true. Only three: false. But honestly, I think most trinitarians will insist there are only three “divine Persons.”
I say that Scripture presents God both ways, and while this presents philosophical challenges, it is not contradictory, since a contradiction requires something to be both A and ~A in the same sense, as I’ve heard you affirm as well.
So far, though, you’ve just indulged in an apparent contradiction: God is one and also three. It’s up to you to show us the two senses, not just to assert that there are difference senses for some term here. I take it you mean to say that God is (exactly) one [A-kind of person] but (exactly) three [B-kind of persons]. Let’s have it, then. Tell us about the differences between these two concepts. And we can decide if that’s a principled distinction or just a made-up, theory-saving distinction.
So, the Trinity is not NOT a person, nor is it a fourth person. Rather, the three Persons are united in such a way as to be properly treated as a Person, but just not one in exactly the way we human beings are persons.
Whoah partner! Hard left turn here! So much for two kinds of persons. (Real persons and merely apparent persons is not two kinds of persons.) I think now you’re denying 2 in my argument above. That’s a high price! You’ll have to substitute something for 2 like “According to the Bible, God can be said to communicate in various human languages, though it (the Trinity) is not the sort of thing which in principle might do that.”
Good luck preaching that, or finding it in the Bible! And note the apologetic consequence: don’t go around saying that in Christianity God or the ultimate source is personal – in contrast to Brahman in Advaita Vedanta or the Dao. You’ll mislead people into what you think is the falsehood that God is a self. No, just as with Brahman and with the Dao, it (God) isn’t a self, but can be talked about as if it were one. (Also, I think he’s implicitly denying 8. But let that pass for now.)
I think there’s a pressing question here. Why can this thing, this “it,” this non-self, the Trinity be spoken of as if it were a self. It’s not just a garden-variety case of personification, right, like when a captain refers to his ship as “she” or when poet says of the sun that “he smiles down on the earth” – right? What, in your view, is person-like about this particular it, the Trinity?
Mr. Schumacher ends with an attack:
If this is a problem, consider the way a Unitarian worships Jesus. Is it different at all from the way you worship God the Father? Maybe it isn’t, but I have a similar difficulty understanding worshiping one who is God in exactly the same way as you worship one who isn’t. If Unitarians worship them in different ways, there is a similar issue with finding instruction on that in Scripture.
He seems to think there is some practical problem for the biblical unitarian here re: kinds of worship. Outwardly, the two acts of worship look much the same. But of course we worship Jesus knowing that he is the human Son of God, whereas we worship God because he is the only god, the Creator. Instruction on that in scripture? Contrast Revelation 4 with Revelation 5. Note the different grounds on which each of them is worshiped. Outwardly, in chapter 5, the two acts of worship will look much the same. But this worry of his really isn’t to the point – he’s just trying to say “You guys have problems too.” OK, but let’s stick with the subject.
Back to my argument: which is it? Is it sound, or unsound? If unsound, why? (Which premise is false?)
And if Mr. Schumacher takes his second route, will he pledge not to mislead his fellow believers by simply using personal pronouns for the Trinity? (Most will take this to assume that the Trinity, the triune God, is a self.) Is he willing to make clear that God is not a self and so is properly an “it” not a “he”, though it can be spoken of as if it were a self? And shouldn’t he at least balance his use of pronouns, mixing up “he” and “it”?
And shouldn’t he say that properly speaking, the Trinity is not a god, though each Person of the Trinity is one? Isn’t our concept of a god that of a very powerful and great self? But for him the Trinity is neither all-powerful, nor omniscient, nor perfectly good, nor could it create anything – though it might be talked about in such ways.
my comment on that blog is this: One way to deal with the Trinity is by Kant’s dinge an sich. That is it is beyond reason. Another way is Emanation. Both seem fine to me. But I do not think they equal the Catholic position. My impression is that Catholics were going with Plato and Augustian for almost a thousand years until problems with the Trinity just got to be so hard that it made more sense to go with Aristotle.
That is- I think the catholic position found emanation to be too hard to stick with. Some problems I think were noted by that fellow from scotland around 800 AD. I forget his name. Eventually I think Aristotle just made more sense. I recall that one issue was divine simplicity.
The Trinitarian position that equates YHWH with the Trinity becomes even more convoluted when considering the speech of YHWH in messianic psalms like Psalm 2. YHWH declares the Messiah to be his “son.” So is Christ the son of the Trinity? Or is there essentially no way to tell who is speaking when the Bible says “thus says YHWH”? Do the authors of the Hebrew Bible use “YHWH” to refer sometimes to the Father, sometimes to the Son, sometimes to the Spirit, and sometimes the Trinity, switching among them without rhyme or reason?
Of course I do take issue with some of these points, and will post something to my blog soon. In the meantime, I wrote something more detailed recently that should clarify some things that aren’t able to be fleshed out in a comment thread.
https://beginningwisdom.org/one-person-or-three-or-both/
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