{"id":35725,"date":"2015-07-22T09:43:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T13:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=35725"},"modified":"2015-07-22T09:47:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T13:47:17","slug":"10-steps-towards-getting-less-confused-about-the-trinity-7-the-deity-of-christ-vs-the-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/10-steps-towards-getting-less-confused-about-the-trinity-7-the-deity-of-christ-vs-the-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #7 – the deity of Christ vs. the Trinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"basketball-306924\"\u201cDo you believe in the leadership of Mike<\/strong>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d I muttered unconvincingly. But I didn\u2019t know what<\/em> I believed. I was new in town, and had never lived in a place with such rabid, overactive basketball fans. The season hadn\u2019t started yet, so I\u2019d never seen the team play. But the fans were already working themselves up into a frenzy.<\/p>\n

Our team was the Wisconsin Way. I knew that much. And I knew that the team captain, the lead player, was named \u201cMichael<\/strong>.\u201d I also knew that the team had a star player, an overwhelming talent, whose name was \u201cMike<\/strong>.\u201d If this wasn\u2019t confusing enough, sometimes when a fan got excited, he or she would yell something about \u201cMikey<\/strong>.\u201d I couldn\u2019t fathom who they meant! Was this yet a third player? Or was it Michael, or Mike, or both? And if it was both, still, were they one player or two?<\/p>\n

I wanted to fit in with my fellow fans, so when people asked me if I believed in the leadership of Mike, I learned to say, \u201cI absolutely do.\u201d<\/strong> But I still didn\u2019t know what I was professing.<\/p>\n

Was the point that Mike just is Michael, that they are one and the same? Or was the point that Mike truly is a leader, that he has that quality? If this latter, I realized, that Michael and Mike might be one or two. Again, I was sure that Mike was the true star of the team, a future hall-of-famer, and I was sure that Michael (whether this was just Mike or not) was the team captain. But I wasn\u2019t sure how the two (?) of them were related. This abstract expression \u201cthe leadership of Mike\u201d just confused me.<\/p>\n

\"basketball-31353\"Finally, I saw the Way play. \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d I said, pointing to a tall, muscular black man.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s Mike, obviously,\u201d said the kid sitting next to me. (I\u2019d been to embarrassed to ask an adult.)<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd who\u2019s that?\u201d I pointed at a much shorter white man.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s Michael, the leader of the team. You believe in the leadership of Mike, don\u2019t you?\u201d The kid was testing my loyalty.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, yes I do,\u201d I said. I realized that this just meant the belief that Mike, by his star play, would lead them to victory. Of course, Michael was still the team captain, the leader of the players. And then it dawned on me, as I listened to shouts of my fellow fans, that both Michael and Mike were nicknamed \u201cMikey.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cGo Mikey!\u201d I cheered, as Mike drove down the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cPass it to Mikey,\u201d yelled the kid.<\/p>\n

Finally, this team made sense to me.<\/p>\n

In my parable,<\/strong> God is Michael, Jesus is Mike, \u201cMikey\u201d is the phrase \u201cthe Lord\u201d in the New Testament, and the fans are evangelical Christians, their saying being not \u201cthe leadership of Mike\u201d but rather \u201cthe deity of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is this thesis of \u201cthe deity of Christ.\u201d<\/strong> Some understand it to be the claim that Jesus just is God himself, that they are one and the same, numerically one. (So, \u201cJesus\u201d and \u201cGod\u201d would be co-referring names, like \u201cDubya\u201d and \u201cGeorge W. Bush.\u201d) It would seem that some Christians thought this. They were mocked by the ancient catholic philosopher-theologian-apologist-polemicist Tertullian as \u201cpatripassians,\u201d that is, as people who believe that the Father suffered, which Tertullian and most other ancient catholic theologians thought absurd. How? Jesus suffered on the cross. If he just is God (aka the Father), then that is to say that God suffered on the cross. Is it absurd that God should suffer? Many theologians nowadays think that both sides of the question can be argued.<\/p>\n

But in any case, a barrier to this interpretation<\/strong> of the \u201cdeity of Christ\u201d (that Jesus and God are one and the same) is that it seems that the two of them have differed and do differ. For instance, according to the New Testament, Jesus stands at the right hand of God. (You can pick whether to take this literally or metaphorically; it doesn\u2019t affect the present point.) But God doesn\u2019t stand at his own right hand. Again, God sent his one and only Son to save us. But Jesus didn\u2019t send his one and only Son to save us. We all know that one being can\u2019t be and not be a certain way, at the same time and in the same way. So it would seem that Jesus and God are two.<\/p>\n

The mainstream ancient interpretation<\/strong> of \u201cthe deity of Christ\u201d was not a statement of identity between the deity (God) and Christ, but rather a statement about how Christ is, a qualitative claim about Christ, that he is divine, that he has the quality of deity. And this was eventually expressed by saying that he was one person with (or \u201cin\u201d) two \u201cnatures\u201d<\/strong> – a human nature and a divine nature. To believe in \u201cthe deity of Christ\u201d was to believe that he also had, in addition to his human nature (like yours or mine), a divine nature.<\/p>\n

What does all of this have to do with the Trinity? Maybe less than you think!<\/strong> Present-day evangelicals tend to focus on \u201cthe deity of Christ,\u201d vacillating between the two interpretations just sketched (and perhaps others too, such as that Jesus is a part of<\/em> or a member of<\/em> God.) In many minds, the \u201cdeity of Christ\u201d issue is the same as \u201cthe Trinity.\u201d These have in common that both are opposed to the idea that Jesus was \u201cjust a man,\u201d in the sense of just another very spiritual and admirable person, a guru and \u201cspiritual leader\u201d if you like, but not in any sense the \u201cSon of God,\u201d not in any sense the uniquely best revelation of who God is. But the Trinity and the deity of Christ are not at all the same claim<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

You might think that this is a picky point. Don\u2019t all acknowledge the deity of the Father? Now add to this the deity of Jesus. We\u2019re 2\/3 of the way to the Trinity right? Just add in the deity of the Holy Spirit, and we have the Trinity.<\/p>\n

But no, we don\u2019t – not if the Trinity is a triune god, a tripersonal god. There have been many Christians, many learned and fairly mainstream Christians, who have believed in the deity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, but have not believed in a tripersonal god.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Somesuch are modern day \u201cOneness\u201d Pentecostals. They stoutly deny traditional trinitarian claims, yet make the three assertions just noted. But they think those are just three names for one self, for one unipersonal god. Something similar seems to have been the view of some ancient catholics who historians now call \u201cmonarchians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"clarke<\/a>Other Christians, in for instance the third or the eighteenth centuries, believed in the deity of Father, Son, and Spirit, but identified the one true God not as the Trinity, but instead as the Father alone. Famous examples include the learned Anglican minister and philosopher-theologian Samuel Clarke (1675-1729)<\/a> and the towering intellectual of early catholic Christianity, the philosopher-theologian-apologist-biblical-scholar Origen. (185-254)<\/a>\"origen<\/a><\/p>\n

How could they believe in the deity of each of the three, and yet be monotheists?<\/strong> Again, they held the one God to be the Father only. The Son and Spirit they held to be divine in lesser ways or degrees than the Father.<\/p>\n

Do you think that deity\/divinity doesn\u2019t come in different kinds of degrees? Or do you think that each member of the Trinity must be divine to the same degree, or in the same way? They would deny both claims, as they firmly held the view that it would be a contradiction for another being to also be divine in the way that the Father (aka God) is divine. They would also point out that in the Bible angels and saved humans are described as divine or as \u201cgods,\u201d though obviously this doesn\u2019t put them on a par with Yahweh (=the Father, God) or even with the Son (=Jesus).<\/p>\n

The point is this: the \u201cdeity of Christ\u201d is not the same claim or set of claims as \u201cthe Trinity.\u201d<\/strong> The best way to understand each is and has always been in dispute. But we know this. People like Origen believed in the deity of Christ long before anyone believed in a tripersonal God. (c. latter 4th century) And after there were doctrines about how God is tripersonal, still some very learned Christians, like Clarke, didn\u2019t believe those, but did believe in the deity of Christ. The Trinity implies the deity of Christ (that is, that Christ has a divine nature), but the deity of Christ (that Christ has a divine nature) doesn\u2019t imply the Trinity, however the Trinity is understood. If both are important to argue for, then it is crucial to see that successfully proving the deity of Jesus doesn\u2019t thereby prove the Trinity, but only takes a first step<\/strong> towards doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo you believe in the leadership of Mike?\u201d \u201cYes?\u201d I muttered unconvincingly. But I didn\u2019t know what I believed. I was new in town, and had never lived in a place with such rabid, overactive basketball fans. The season hadn\u2019t started yet, so I\u2019d never seen the team play. But the fans were already working… Read More »10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #7 – the deity of Christ vs. the Trinity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35734,"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":[37,16,6,58,4,14,5,9,3,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-books","category-complaints","category-creeds","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-modalism","category-philosophy","category-theories","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35725","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=35725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35735,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35725\/revisions\/35735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}