{"id":2501,"date":"2011-03-10T16:30:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T21:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2501"},"modified":"2020-12-21T18:18:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T00:18:05","slug":"no-trinity-verse-a-good-thing-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/no-trinity-verse-a-good-thing-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"No “Trinity Verse” – A Good Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Over at Biola’s alumni magazine, Winter 2011 issue, theologian Fred Sanders has a piece<\/a> in which he argues,<\/p>\n

The Trinity is a biblical doctrine, but let\u2019s admit it: There\u2019s something annoying about how hard it is to put your finger on a verse that states the whole doctrine.<\/p>\n

The Bible presents the elements of the doctrine in numerous passage<\/strong>s, of course: that there is only one God; that the Father is God; that the Son is God; and that the Spirit is God. We can also tell easily enough that the Father, Son and Spirit are really distinct from one another, and are not just three names for one person. If you hold all those clear teachings of Scripture in your mind at one time and think through them together, the doctrine of the Trinity is inevitable. Trinitarianism is a biblical doctrine and all the ingredients are given<\/strong> to us there: Just add thought and you have the classic doctrine. (emphases added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmmm…. I would have thought that the elements of “the” doctrine included that the three are same substance<\/strong> or essence (homoousios<\/em>). And that\u00a0the there are co-equal, and co-eternal, uncreated, though the Father timelessly generates the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from him (or if you’re Western\/Latin – from both Father and Son). Maybe something about their having one “divine nature” as well.<\/p>\n

It isn’t that Sanders is unaware of any of this; he’s aware of all of it<\/strong>. It’s just, he’s writing in a popular, devotional vein, and so he’s sticking to what, in his view, the Bible straight up teaches, and to what is edifying to the average pew-dweller, or at least, to the average Biola alumnus. This is kind of standard, for conservative theologians to not mention the confusing stuff when dealing with non-scholars.<\/p>\n

But it strikes me that his approach is typical of American evangelicalism generally. Most evangelicals don’t really care <\/strong> (or really, know) about creedal or theologically precise Trinity doctrines. (Hence, efforts like thi<\/a>s.) They think of “the” Trinity doctrine as just the all-important claim of “the divinity of Christ<\/strong>“, plus a bit more (i.e. same claim, whatever it is<\/em>, for the Holy Spirit). It’s really the “divinity of Christ” \/ aka the claim that “Jesus is God” which is the focus in evangelical spirituality, in its preaching, in its pop theology. (Notice, that’s not really a historical, creedal Incarnation doctrine. Yes, for evangelicals he’s both God and a man, but they’re not too hip on discoursing on the two natures or the hypostatic union, and so on.)<\/p>\n

Back to the Trinity,\u00a0all Sanders adds really, to this standard way of thinking is that this doctrine is not <\/em>supposed to be some sort of modalism (e.g. one divine person who lives or appears in three different ways). \u00a0This is an important caveat, for I think that many \u00a0understand by “Jesus is God” that Jesus and God are one and the same, i.e. numerically one. And Jesus is a person, and God is a person (that is, a self), so they must be the same person<\/em> (i.e. Jesus is God himself). Of course, when you say that “the” doctrine doesn’t<\/em> mean that, it’s pretty unclear what<\/em> it means. Like those Dallas Theological Seminary guys<\/a>, Sanders’s approach leaves you scratching your head.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, exceptions to this, among evangelical theologians and philosophers. But here at least, Sanders is adopting the common approach. He’s assuming, correctly, that what he says above is compatible with what various evangelical intellectuals think, e.g. “social” trinitarians. Problem is, thanks to that wonderfully ambiguous word “is”<\/strong>, \u00a0it’s compatible with just about any<\/em> Christian theology.<\/p>\n

In Sanders’s view, the virtue of this doctrine not being in one verse<\/strong> is that it is instead “a massive, comprehensive, full-Bible doctrine that serves to expand our minds as readers of Scripture.”<\/p>\n

Sweet! How does that work?<\/p>\n

After quoting a few passages in which the three are mentioned, Sanders says that “entire books of the Bible are structured by the same Trinitarian logic<\/strong>“. No, he’s not really talking about logic<\/a> here. \u00a0His idea is that you can see a pattern of \u00a0the Three, in some sense working together; you see a co-operation of three agents.<\/p>\n

In Galatians, for example, Paul proves his gospel of faith against salvation by works in a three-part argument: The Galatians received the Spirit by faith, God promised Abraham that he would justify the Gentiles by faith, and Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. The great arc of Romans runs from the Father\u2019s judgment through the Son\u2019s propitiation to the Spirit\u2019s deliverance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This prepares is for<\/p>\n

…the biggest Christian thought of all<\/strong>: The whole Bible is one complete book that reveals the Trinity. That fact is what the ancient church fathers meant when they summarized the Christian faith in the Apostles\u2019 Creed: \u201cI believe in God the Father \u2026 and in his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ \u2026 and in the Holy Spirit.\u201d (emphases added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But any unitarian<\/strong> can fully endorse the Apostle’s Creed. And in the 2nd c., when various shorter forms of what eventually was called “The Apostles Creed” were floating around, most catholic Christians were just not trinitarians at all. Many, at least of the catholic intellectuals, were Logos theologians<\/strong>, holding that some time before creation, God externalized his Word, which is to say that he created a helper, an agent alongside himself, the pre-existent Son. The status of the Holy Spirit was at this point unclear.<\/p>\n

Or take the 17th c. English unitarian John Bidle<\/a>. (aka Biddle) \u00a0He denied any Trinity doctrine; for him, as for the Logos theologians, the one God just is the Father. A long time ago, he created the Son and Spirit. Would he have any problem with Sander’s “Trinitarian logic”? No – he too sees a pattern of three cooperating agents in all those texts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I say all this not really to criticize Sanders<\/strong> – I recognize he’s writing a pop piece here – but rather the mainstream American evangelical tradition in which he’s swimming. In that lake, you’d never get the idea that Trinity doctrines were controversial <\/strong>(till Mormons and JWs came around), are that there have always been\u00a0dueling, incompatible forms of them, and that anything that could be characterized as a trinitarian theology was pretty controversial among Christians<\/em> from roughly 150-400, and from about 1520-1880. No (assumes many an evangelical) this\u00a0must <\/em>just be obviously right there in the Bible, since our views are all based purely on the Bible, and we<\/em> believe in the Trinity.<\/p>\n

Sigh.<\/p>\n

There’s one thing I would criticize Sanders for. It is merely <\/strong>spin<\/strong> to claim that it’s a good thing that the doctrine isn’t clearly taught in any one place in the Bible. Even if it is correct that what Sanders calls “the” doctrine is the best reading of the Bible, all things considered, it still would be more clearly<\/em> a teaching thereof, and so less disputed and less confusing, \u00a0if it were expressed, as it were, in one breath.<\/p>\n

But, it is not. So, argue we must<\/strong> – about the meaning of the various texts, and about which Trinity theory, if any, makes the best sense of them? Which, if any, as Sanders says, is “the key to the entire book.”<\/p>\n

Update: here’s a positive review<\/a> of Sanders’s recent book. I haven’t had a chance to read it, but evidently he argues that in some sense evangelicals are the\u201cmost thoroughly Trinitarian Christians in the history of the church\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n

Update: About that book…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Biola’s alumni magazine, Winter 2011 issue, theologian Fred Sanders has a piece in which he argues, The Trinity is a biblical doctrine, but let\u2019s admit it: There\u2019s something annoying about how hard it is to put your finger on a verse that states the whole doctrine. The Bible presents the elements of the… Read More »No “Trinity Verse” – A Good Thing?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"default","neve_meta_container":"default","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"off","neve_meta_disable_footer":"off","neve_meta_disable_title":"off","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,6,4,5,3,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-complaints","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-modalism","category-theories","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","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=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42963,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions\/42963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}