Time for mutual interrogations! This is the best part of this debate.
Finnegan questions Bosserman: 1:24:35 – 1:36:19
- F: Was the incarnate Jesus immortal?
- B: Only in his divine nature. So, yes, he was.
- F But then, he can’t die.
- B: The human nature can.
- F: So not God, but the impersonal human nature died?
- B: No, Jesus died as a man; I’m no docetist.
- F: I’m unclear on the answer then. Did Jesus die or not? If he exp’d a human death, he died, no?
Comment: Finnegan is right – the answer is totally unclear. Hence, Bosserman reaches for a red herring:
- B: Why bring in a Freudian idea like ego? Anyway, it’s a mystery. One person experienced the realities of both natures. This is an old claim.
- F: Don’t care about Freud. Rather, you say Jesus can atone only because he’s God. But the thing, the nature, that makes him God doesn’t die. How can this be?
- B: He can atone because he is “our covenantal head.” Didn’t say he can atone b/c he’s God, but only that he’s righteous b/c he’s God. No man can be righteous post-Fall.
- F: So Adam not righteous?
- B: No, he was. This pre-Fall. Only a divine being could save us.
- F: I agree [that Adam was righteous?]
Comment: Not getting anywhere here.
- F: During his earthly ministry, was Jesus omniscient?
- B: Yes, the logos was, so Jesus was.
- F: Was he lying when he said he didn’t know when he was coming back?
- B: No. God can occupy radically different perspectives at the same time.
- F: I ask you for $5. You say you don’t have it. Then you give $5 to someone else. Confronted, you clarify that you lacked $5 in your left hand but had $5 in your right.[ Hence, on your view, Jesus lied.]
- B: Bad analogy. [Sort of suggests that it is beyond human capacity to say how it is bad.]
Comment: Point to Finnegan. Bosserman is special pleading here.
- F: Need clarification on John 17:3. Who is = to the only true God here?
- B: Father.
- F: Then, you’re not a trinitarian, right?
- B: Yes I am. I say the Father is divine, but so is the Son, and the first doesn’t exclude the second. Compare: Amos 3:2. Here Israel “alone” was chosen, but clearly, so was Judah, Levi, etc. Because “Israel” here represents all the Hebrew tribes. Just so, any member of the Trinity may represent the whole of the Trinity.
- F: If I say then that I’m the only one debating you now, this is consistent with others also debating you now?
- B: No, but the case is different with God.
- F: Your position looks unfalsifiable; there is always this escape clause that things are different with God.
- B: “Unfalsifiable” a recent idea, and it’s false that a statement must be falsifiable to be true.
- F: That’s not right.
- B: No proof-text for “unfalsifiability” criterion of truth. God’s word the ultimate criterion. God is ultimate, and we can’t question him.
Comment: No, it is right. But Finnegan should not commit to that. If a hypothesis is unfalsifiable, that seems to create a problem for its being all-things-considered reasonable, but not for its truth. In any case, Bosserman’s statement in the 4th line shows that he doesn’t understand what it is to identify “two” things. It’s a contradiction to assert that different things are each numerically identical to something. One point to each side here.
- F: Is Jesus Yahweh?
- B: Yes.
- F: But if the Father is also Yahweh, how is it that Yahweh is one?
- B: They have one essence/being.
Comment: Both question and answer unclear. What’s the problem with two “Yahweh”s exactly, i.e. two beings going by that name? A swing and a miss here.
Oddly, Bosserman refuses to look at Finnegan during this discussion, even while Finnegan is speaking to and looking right at him.
Round to Finnegan.
Next time: the tables are turned.
Related posts:
God, Allah, George Washington, and Eric Clapton
podcast 61 - Dr. Dustin Smith on preexistence in ancient Jewish thought
podcast 81 - Dr. Oliver Crisp on the breadth of Reformed tradition
the evolution of my views on the Trinity - part 9
Is God a Self? Part 3 - Clayton
Arius and Athanasius, part 2 - Producing something with 'ingredients' (JT)
Three recent whistleblowers
Dr. James N. Anderson on Paradoxes in Theology
Richard of St. Victor 6 - Supreme Love Only Among Equals, Again (Scott)
God and Allah
Thank you for the review. It was intelligent, thoughtful, well formulated and clear. However, debate tactic and form aside, as a trinitarian I remain unmoved and find Finnegan’s position to be abjectly uncompelling.
The truth is stubborn in that it remains to be the truth regardless of someones good or bad presentation of it.
Again, thank you for your analysis and have a great day!
it was rather odd watching Bosserman commit a fruedian slip after lecturing about not introducing Fruedian ideas. while Bosserman claims he is a “chalcedonian christian”, at 1:28 38 he talks about Jesus humanity as beng “another person took on human flesh and lived a perfectly righteous life in Jesus”, I would surmise that by calling himself a Chalcedonian christian” he is claiming awareness with the issues involved surrounding chalcedons council, which attempted to walk the fine line between the heresy of eutychus belief that Jesus had only one blended nature after the incarnating and the Nestoriian party heresy that jesus’ 2 natures were personalized into being 2 persons .Bosserman unwittingly verbalizes his commitment to nestorian heresy. Nestorian belief, that of turning Jesus natures into two personalistic subjects, is rampant amongst trinitarian believers and this is well known by systematic theologians..a nature is a mental construct which is descriptive of the type of object it describes, the object it describes is what instantiates the nature. for example,. a human instantiates a human nature, a nature does not exist independently as an independet subject, as we hear all the time “jesus human nature died but his divine nature didn’t.”
Dale
No problem if it were just a matter of sharing a name. Trinitarians seem to posit a numerical identity to the Son and Father as YHWH.
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