{"id":2312,"date":"2010-09-20T15:44:01","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T19:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2312"},"modified":"2010-09-20T15:45:41","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T19:45:41","slug":"is-god-a-self-part-4-%e2%80%93-j-p-moreland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/is-god-a-self-part-4-%e2%80%93-j-p-moreland\/","title":{"rendered":"Is God a Self? Part 4 \u2013 J.P. Moreland"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(click for image credit)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

J.P. Moreland<\/strong> is a well-known and prolific Christian philosopher and apologist, as well as a Willardite writer on spiritual formation.<\/p>\n

Back around 1992-3 I was privileged to take a few classes with him as an undergraduate at Biola. He’s a hard working, straight shooting, and forceful person, yet with an obvious spiritual side. I’ve read and profited from a lot of his stuff. Not that I can keep up!<\/p>\n

Is God a person? Watch <\/strong>Moreland’s interview<\/strong> here (blue button)<\/a> then, click here for my take –><\/p>\n

I think that the answer, given Moreland’s brand of Social Trinitarianism<\/a>, is a straightforward no<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Moreland, however, wants to soften the blow<\/strong>, so he says that God is and isn’t a person – depends what you mean by “person”. I don’t think this is right – in his view, God is personal<\/em> (God is a being which in some sense contains<\/em> persons) but not itself a person\/self. But there’s no common, relevant meaning of “person” on which God, as Moreland understands it, is a person. I noticed that throughout, Moreland helps himself to personal pronouns – God is a “he”. This is a bit weasly – he knows that this will cause many to infer that he holds God to be a self, which he does not.<\/p>\n

He does clearly say that in his view God is tri-personal – “three persons in one being” – a person being a “center of consciousness”<\/strong>. God is one being, with one essence, one what-ness, one set of essential attributes. But within this one being, there are three persons\/centers of consciousness, forming a community. I was surprised at his Platonic talk of “participation” of all of us humans “participating in” the universal humanity, and of these “centers”\/persons “participating in” divinity.<\/p>\n

The interviewer asks if a good analogy would be one dog with three heads<\/a><\/strong> . Moreland replies, with perhaps a hint of irritation, that “some have used that analogy”, and that he’s got no problem with it. “Some”?\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09 I’ve been told that the Trinity chapter in this book<\/a> was written by Moreland’s co-author, Bill Craig. Perhaps Cerberus wasn’t Moreland’s choice… or perhaps he’s had second thoughts.<\/p>\n

The interviewer hints that this amounts to three gods<\/strong> – for these three are just such that one word (or maybe one concept) applies to all three of them. But Moreland’s having none of that – he holds that there really is one universal present in all three.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t get to the heart of the worry, of course – even if there are universal properties, that would still suggest that we’ve got three gods here – just as three instances of humanity imply three human beings, don’t three instances of divinity imply three gods?<\/p>\n

There are some sidetracks about the incarnation and about dualism. Moreland takes the view, as do I, that you and I are souls – we use our bodies, but we are not our bodies, and they aren’t even parts of us. This isn’t terribly surprising if theism is true, for God too is a soul<\/strong>, a non-physical self.<\/p>\n

But wait – that can’t be right<\/strong> – his social trinitarian theory requires that the one God is indeed one thing, and a soul too, but NOT a self. Instead, it is a thing which in some sense contains three selves, three centers of consciousness within it. Moreland catches himself here, while expounding on the theme that if theism is true, there could be at least one self even if there were no physical cosmos: given theism, “the fundamental being… is a person, its… he is personal” i.e. he – really, it – contains these “centers of consciousness” \/ persons \/ selves.<\/p>\n

But he says here that God<\/em> (presumably the triune God, not any of these mere “centers” any of which could be mistaken for a god) is capable of thinking & feeling. Presumably, though, on his own views, this community-containing substance doesn’t literally do those – only its members do. Again, misleading.\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/strong>t seems to me that this is inconsistent with\u00a0 monotheism<\/strong>, contrary to Moreland’s intentions. Like a number of other evangelical, philosophical social trinitarians, in apologetics contexts, he talks as if God were a self (e.g. see the conclusion of his Kalam argument). But when the Trinity comes up, no sir – we<\/em> never said God is a self!<\/p>\n

:-\/<\/p>\n

One way to clarify things<\/strong>, I think, would be for these social trinitarians to make scare-quote motions with their fingers when using “He” or “Him” etc. for the triune God. Works for “person” too.<\/p>\n

Seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J.P. Moreland is a well-known and prolific Christian philosopher and apologist, as well as a Willardite writer on spiritual formation. Back around 1992-3 I was privileged to take a few classes with him as an undergraduate at Biola. He’s a hard working, straight shooting, and forceful person, yet with an obvious spiritual side. I’ve read… Read More »Is God a Self? Part 4 \u2013 J.P. Moreland<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-philosophy","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}