{"id":40397,"date":"2020-05-20T23:04:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T04:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=40397"},"modified":"2021-04-12T21:47:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T02:47:02","slug":"do-you-think-jesus-is-the-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/do-you-think-jesus-is-the-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Jesus the Trinity?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ridiculous-450x390.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-40398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ridiculous-450x390.jpg 450w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ridiculous.jpg 576w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This post is occasioned by the following exchange between a couple of Facebook friends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Unitarian: &#8220;<strong>You said that Jesus existed &#8216;as God&#8217;.<\/strong> Did you mean &#8216;as God the Son&#8217;? <strong>I presume that by &#8216;God&#8217; you actually mean the whole Trinity<\/strong>, and I cannot believe that you think that Jesus existed as a Trinity.&#8221;<\/li><li>Trinitarian: &#8220;Stop. It. I&#8217;m not playing that <strong>ridiculous game<\/strong> for the hundredth time.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The trinitarian goes on to scold the unitarian for playing verbal games, pointing out that for a trinitarian, &#8220;God&#8221; can refer to the Trinity, or to any of the three Persons. That is correct, and surely not something any unitarian would deny, but <strong>I think there&#8217;s more than a terminological problem here<\/strong>, and I don&#8217;t think that his interlocutor was playing any game. Let me explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My trinitarian friend, as a believer in the deity of Christ, you <em>seem<\/em> to be committed to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>1. Jesus just is (is numerically the same as) God<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why would someone think you&#8217;re committed to this? Because of the arguments you make for &#8220;the deity of Christ.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/why-i-think-youre-identifying-jesus-with-god\/\">But that&#8217;s another post<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a trinitarian, you believe:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>2. God just is the Trinity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is self-evident that = (numerical identity) is transitive. Thus, if Jesus = God, and God = Trinity, it follows that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>3. Jesus just is the Trinity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hence, someone may ask you if you believe that Jesus just is the Trinity. It is a fair question, given that you seem committed to both 1 and 2. Also, in some contexts Christians will use &#8220;Jesus&#8221; as the proper name of the Christian God, which for them just is the Trinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BUT of course, everyone knows that <strong>3 &#8220;sounds wrong.&#8221;<\/strong> It&#8217;s <em>not <\/em>something a trinitarian is supposed to say. <strong>Yet, anyone committed to 1 and 2 is thereby committed to the truth of 3.<\/strong> What to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So long as your loyalty to the project of <em>trinitarian<\/em> theology remains intact, you are committed to 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/not-the-same-450x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-40399\" width=\"421\" height=\"281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/not-the-same-450x300.jpg 450w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/not-the-same.jpg 507w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 421px) 100vw, 421px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The thing to do, as many trinitarians will tell you, is to deny 1.<\/strong> Jesus is not God in the sense of <em>being numerically the same as<\/em> God. If he were, then whatever is true of one would have to be true of the other. But all Christians <em>know <\/em>that they have differed in various ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus, for any Trinity theory, should be identical with &#8220;God the Son,&#8221; <em>not<\/em> with the triune God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What, then, of the slogan that &#8220;Jesus is God&#8217;?<\/strong> How should a trinitarian understand that, if it shouldn&#8217;t be understood as asserting their numerical identity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, many trinitarians will say that the &#8220;is&#8221; in &#8220;Jesus is God&#8221; should be understood as an &#8220;is&#8221; of predication, that is, of description. &#8220;Jesus is God&#8221; then, would mean<strong> that he is divine,<\/strong> a divine being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But wait&#8230; the Trinity just is the one true God &#8211; that&#8217;s what it is for a theology to be trinitarian. To be numerically identical to the one God, that entails being divine, surely. So <strong>the Trinity is a divine being<\/strong>, and <strong>the Son (given that &#8220;Jesus is God&#8221;) is a divine being<\/strong>. But they&#8217;re plainly not <em>the same<\/em> divine being, as they differ: one is tripersonal, and the other is in some sense 1\/3 of the Trinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Different <em>divine beings<\/em>? That&#8217;s the same as saying<strong> different <em>gods<\/em><\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"286\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/what-is-the-trinity-by-dale-tuggy-286x450.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-40400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/what-is-the-trinity-by-dale-tuggy-286x450.png 286w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/what-is-the-trinity-by-dale-tuggy.png 485w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 286px) 100vw, 286px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It&#8217;s not easy to square a trinitarian theology with the idea of monotheism<\/strong>; but you probably knew that already. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This difficulty leaps right out of the Nicene creed, with its talk about &#8220;true God from true God&#8221; &#8211; that sounds like not only using the word  &#8220;God&#8221; ambiguously, for two different beings (Son, Father) but also it <em>sounds like<\/em> belief in two beings, each of whom is &#8220;true God,&#8221; i.e. fully divine, so, a god. But that is <strong>too many gods!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But parsing the Nicene creed is no easy task. (See my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.what-is-the-trinity.com\/\"><em>What is the Trinity?<\/em><\/a> for more on that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, my trinitarian friend, if you agree that <strong>our argument above is unsound because 1 is false<\/strong>, for the reasons given above, then you also agree that <a href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-124-a-challenge-to-jesus-is-god-apologists\/\">the first three steps of <em>this<\/em> argument are a sound argument<\/a>. I encourage you, then, to engage further with that argument. Do you also accept 4, 6, and 8? If not, why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A trinitarian ought to say No. But why? Doesn&#8217;t he accept &#8220;the deity of Christ&#8221;?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","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":[37,16,8,10,9,13,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-books","category-linkage","category-logic","category-philosophy","category-theologians","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40397","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=40397"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43203,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40397\/revisions\/43203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}