“What, is the Son supposed to be an atheist?” – Part 3

After the unhelpful truism we looked at last time, White gives a short quotation from (then) JW author Greg Stafford. Then he launches into this:

And just here we see the circularity of the arguments of those who deny the deity of Christ: why can’t Thomas mean what he said? [i.e. that Jesus is his god, John 20:28] Because, of course, [the denier reasons,] the Father is different than the Son. It was the Son who became Incarnate, and since the Son, as the perfect man, acknowledged the Father as His God, He, himself, can’t be fully deity. The argument assumes that God could not enter into human form.

The Forgotten Trinity, p. 71.

What argument? Dr. White hasn’t really made clear what, supposedly, the non-trinitarian is thinking here. Here is one way to fill out the sort of argument he’s gesturing at:

1. The Father and Son are different. (obviously true premise)
2. The Father is the Son’s god. (John 20:17)
3. There is only one god. (John 17:1-3, etc.)
4. Therefore, the Father is the only god. (2, 3)
5. Something which is “fully deity” is a god. (premise – true by definition)
6. Therefore, if the Son were fully deity, he’d be the same god as the Father. (4,5)
7. But if the Father and the Son were the same god, they would not differ. (premise, implied by the obvious analysis of __ is the same god as __ and the Indiscernibility of Identicals – more here on those)
8. The Father and Son are not the same god. (1,7)
9. The author of John is not obviously contradicting himself in chapter 20. (charitable assumption)
10. When Thomas says “My Lord and my God” to Jesus (John 20:28), we should not read this as the author implying that Jesus is a god (and so, is the same god as the Father). (8,9, 6)

This argument seems sound to me. More importantly, it’s hard to see how an argument like this “assumes that God could not enter into human form.” Really? In which premise? I could see how Dr. White, who does not well understand arguments involving claims of numerical identity, might suppose that premise 7 assumes the falsity of his own Trinity theory. But “God has entered into human form” seems wholly compatible with 7.

Perhaps what he’s thinking is this simple: it is outrageous that these deniers assume there could not be someone with a god over him, and also someone without a god over him, and these two are the same god.

If that’s what he’s thinking, I would say, stop whining about assuming, and ask them for an argument that such is impossible. Then, show why that is not a compelling argument. Problem is, there is a compelling argument! It’s purely conceptual, and even if Dr. White were not allergic to precise arguments, still he would have no good answer to it:

1. There is some w and some x such that w is the god of x. (assume for reductio)
2. There is some y such that there is no z which is the god of y. (assume for reductio)
3. x and y are the same god. (assume for reductio)
4. It is false that x = y. (That is, x and y are numerically distinct.) (1, 2, Indiscernibility of Identicals)
5. For any s and t and any kind-term F, s and t are the same F just in case: s is an F, t is an F, and s = t (i.e. s and t are numerically identical). (Premise – conceptual analysis)
6. x and y are not the same god. (4,5)

Notice that 3 and 6 contradict: that is the point. From three assumptions (1-3) we can derive a contradiction (3,6), using only self-evident additional premises (5 and the Indiscernibility of Identicals). It follows that at least one of our assumptions (1,2,3) is false; they can’t all be true, as they imply a contradiction, as we’ve shown. And fancy hermeneutical footwork is useless here – that can’t solve all problems – as no premise depends on any interpretation of any Bible passage. (This is why I used letters – to show that the point is perfectly general. As an exercise, get rid of the letters and the quantification in 1 and 2 and reformulate the argument in terms of the Father and the Son.)

White continues,

Why? Well, what would the God-man be like? If one of the divine persons entered into human flesh, how would such a divine person act? Would He be an atheist? Would He refuse to acknowledge those divine persons who had not entered into human existence? Of course not. Yet when we see the Lord Jesus doing exactly what we would expect the Incarnate Son to do, we find this being used as an argument against His deity! So those who put forward such arguments have already made up their minds. They are not deriving their beliefs from the Scriptures but are forcing those beliefs onto the Scriptures.

White is a bit loose with his language here (“entered into human flesh,” “acknowledge”), but I think he’s doing the right sort of thing, which is to say: let’s step back from the rival theories here, and (presupposing neither of them) let’s ask what would expect to observe if each were true. (This is the style of reasoning I employed here.)

Suppose that Jesus is both divine (entailing that he is Yahweh himself) and human, i.e. a real human being. What we’d expect to see, White argues, is exactly what we do see in the NT: Jesus “acknowledging” the remaining divine Persons who declined to themselves become human. Thus, what we see in the NT is no evidence against our supposition.

But this is by no means clear! What I would expect to see, if Yahweh himself were to be a man, would be that man expecting all others to worship him while himself worshiping no one, and submitting his will to no one else’s will. Why? Because, in the Bible, Yahweh is not subject to any other. He’s the only true God, and has no god over him. But Jesus prays to another, submits to another, and worships another, the one he calls “Father.”

And when we add in Dr. White’s trinitarian speculation that the Father and Son are the same god, we really do not find what we should expect to find in the NT. If they’re the same god, we should not expect to see one being the god of the other.

This “what would we expect to see” argument, then, does not go well for him, once we acknowledge these two obvious if inconvenient points.

But why is he so sure that non-trinitarians are stupidly assuming the impossibility (or just, the falsity) of Incarnation? He’s none too clear about that here, but I think we can explain what he’s thinking – next time.