{"id":78,"date":"2007-02-25T12:02:02","date_gmt":"2007-02-25T12:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/78"},"modified":"2015-03-06T21:50:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T02:50:06","slug":"is-the-doctrine-of-the-incarnation-prior-to-the-source-of-trinitarian-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/is-the-doctrine-of-the-incarnation-prior-to-the-source-of-trinitarian-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the doctrine of the Incarnation prior to & the source of Trinitarian doctrine? – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I was reading famous philosopher of religion John Hick<\/a>‘s contribution to the 1982 book The Concept of Monotheism in Islam & Christianity<\/em><\/a>, and ran across an interesting idea. Let me put it in context. If you know anything about Hick, you can guess that in his chapter<\/a> he’s is ultimately trying to promote his unique theory of religious pluralism. Here’s the connection he sees between mainstream trinitarianism and pluralism: (p. 65) —-><\/p>\n

Regarding the “safeguarding”, on the previous page (for some reason, google books no longer has it available), he says:<\/p>\n

The doctrine of the Trinity was developed as an interpretive framework to secure the prior doctrine of the deity of Christ.<\/strong> That is to say, if Jesus Christ was God incarnate, but if throughout the period of his earthly life God was also at work sustaining the universe, receiving prayer and otherwise acting outside the person of the historical Jesus, it follows that the Godhead is at least two-fold, namely Father and Son. This was the essential expansion or complication of monotheism required by belief in divine incarnation. And when the Spirit of God… is added, we have a Trinity. Given the doctrine of the Incarnation, which it was formed to protect, a binitarian or trinitarian conception of God was thus inevitable. (p. 64, my emphasis)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"JohnHe then goes on to endorse a revisionary doctrine of the Incarnation<\/strong>, or rather two of them (from 20th c. theologians Lampe and Baillie), for if we accept the Incarnation doctrine that way, “it no longer necessarily involves the claim to the unique superiority of Christianity which the more traditional [i.e. Chalcedonian] understanding of the Incarnation involved.” (67) Ho hum<\/strong>. I think several writers have refuted his pluralism as well as any philosophical theory has been refuted, and his suggested “up to date” versions of the Incarnation just amount to God’s working through Jesus to a higher extent than he works through the rest of us – it’s basically akin to later Unitarian views of Christ – what sometimes used to be call a “humanitarian” view, which make him a man who is uncommonly godly but not worthy of worship.<\/p>\n

What I’m interested in, is this. In what senses, if any, is Incarnation theory “prior to” any trinitarian doctrine?<\/strong> My first reaction, is that it is prior both historically (theories of Jesus’ divinity came first) and in terms of centrality. I mean, in an evangelistic context, or in a scholarly context when trying to explain the essence of Christian doctrine, most Christians lead with the doctrine of the Incarnation, and only later (if ever) get around to saying something about the Trinity. Faithful readers, what say you?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading famous philosopher of religion John Hick‘s contribution to the 1982 book The Concept of Monotheism in Islam & Christianity, and ran across an interesting idea. Let me put it in context. If you know anything about Hick, you can guess that in his chapter he’s is ultimately trying to promote his unique… Read More »Is the doctrine of the Incarnation prior to & the source of Trinitarian doctrine? – Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35009,"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":[15,33,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christology","category-incarnation","category-theologians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","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=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35010,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/35010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}