{"id":40952,"date":"2019-01-13T22:50:28","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T03:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=40952"},"modified":"2019-01-14T21:48:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T02:48:11","slug":"the-tuggy-brown-debate-dales-opening-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/the-tuggy-brown-debate-dales-opening-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tuggy-Brown debate: Dale’s opening statement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Didn’t see the debate? It is now posted in full here, in HD TV quality<\/a>, thanks to Sharon Gill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s my whole opening statement, in printable form.<\/a> I focus on clear, central, and unambiguous NT claims. I know, even though Dr. Brown vehemently denies it, that texts like John 1, Colossians 1, Philippians 2, and Hebrews 1 are and long have been debated by serious scholars as to their proper interpretations. I chose to lead with a consideration of some pan-New-Testament facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

To whet your appetite, here are the six facts<\/strong> I presented, facts which would be surprising if the NT authors are trinitarians, but would be expected if they are unitarians. Thus, they provide strong evidence<\/strong> that those authors were not trinitarians, but rather unitarians, holding the one God to be the Father alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. All four gospels feature a \u201cmere man\u201d compatible main thesis. <\/li>
  2. In the New Testament, the word \u201cGod\u201d nearly always refers to the Father, while no word there refers to the Trinity.<\/li>
  3. In the New Testament only the Father and the man Jesus are worshiped. <\/li>
  4. That God is triune or tripersonal is never a clear assertion of any passage in the NT; core Jewish theology is always assumed. <\/li>
  5. There is no trace of any first century controversy about whether or not Christian theology is truly monotheistic.<\/li>
  6. No New Testament author lifts a finger to limit or qualify clear implications of the Son\u2019s limitations. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    From what I remember, correct me if I’m wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Dr. Brown ignored #1.<\/strong><\/li>
    • Dr. Brown merely simply asserted, implausibly, that #2 would not <\/em>be surprising<\/strong> if the NT authors were unitarians, despite the examples of all undeniably trinitarian authors since c. 400 A.D.<\/li>
    • He inadequately addressed #3<\/strong>, ignoring the lack of worship of the Trinity as such, and sort of suggesting that the Holy Spirit should not (yet?) be an object of worship, along the way contentiously asserting that the NT demands that God and his Son get “the same” worship.<\/li>
    • He ignored #4<\/strong>, being content with his many (often contentious and disputable) deductions. To him, that God is a Trinity is an obvious <\/em>implication of the NT – a view which I hold to be refuted by the fact that there are no trinitarians, no believers in three equally divine persons who are the one God, in church history until the late 300s. About this fact, he just denies it, waving the standard apologists’ list of 2nd c. “fathers” who apply terms like “God” or “a god” to the Son (or the Logos<\/em>). He simply does not know that Justin, Tertullian, and other “two stage” logos theorists hold that the Logos <\/em>came into existence just before creation, and is in various ways less divine than the Father. <\/li>
    • He denied #5<\/strong> on the inadequate grounds that Jesus’s opponents in John claim that he was making himself a god (or God) and that he was claiming to be equal to God. Of course, those charges are wholly compatible with Jesus saying and teaching exactly what biblical unitarians<\/em> think he taught. (And we should probably consider in this connection the charges brought against Jesus at his trials, according to the gospels. Do you see evidence of the relevant sort of controversy there<\/em>?)<\/li>
    • About #6, I think he supposes that some two-natures theory and\/or some kenosis theory will show how a fully divine being can be limited in power and knowledge, and dependent on another, etc. He doesn’t seem to have developed views on those topics. But more importantly, it’s not clear how those later theories would be to the point. I don’t think he’s really grappled with the significance of fact #6<\/strong>. The NT writers never say or imply or presuppose that it was “as God” that he was unlimited, while “as man” he was limited – whatever such a distinction might mean. (And it might mean several things!)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      All in all, I don’t think Dr. Brown put a significant dent in this evidence<\/strong>; he just preferred to go back to what I call the canon within the canon – that set of texts by which it is traditional to argue for “the deity of Christ” – with a few twists. Of course, these facts are part of the wider context of the NT, and they will be relevant to how we read various passages. In particular, #1 should cause us not to go wild in making deductions from, e.g. the “I am” statements. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Did Dr. Brown adequately rebut my argument from six NT facts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40953,"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":[54,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debates","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40952","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=40952"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40983,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40952\/revisions\/40983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}