Steve, what in your view is a "selv-ish" descriptor that the Bible applies to God?
Before we answer the question, let’s establish the framework.
a) Tuggy already thinks the Father is a divine self. So that’s a premise which he himself supplies.
b) In addition, this is how Tuggy has defined selfhood in response to me:
Sure you do - this is a rough, vague concept we all have. It is a thing which is conscious (yes, of self as well as other things), which can act for a reason (can choose, has a will), which is intelligent (has knowledge), and which can engage in friendship.
But it seems that he wants to deny the one God to literally be a self. If so, he goes hard against the Bible, throughout. God knows, acts, gets mad, makes and carries out plans, stands in an I-thou relationship to Jesus, as well as to disciples of Jesus. Further, I’m willing to bet that like just about all Christians, he interacts with God as a self to a self.
So that’s another premise which Tuggy himself supplies. Keep in mind that I’m responding to Tuggy on his own terms.
i) Let’s apply his own criterion of selfhood to a party other than the Father. Jesus makes the following statement in Revelation:
And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works (Rev 2:23).
Given Tuggy’s definition, that makes Jesus a self.
ii) But that’s not all this passage implies about Jesus.
a) To begin with, Jesus is casting himself in the role of the Final Judge. Yet that’s a paradigmatically divine prerogative. Because God is our Creator, we are ultimately answerable to God.
b) Moreover, this prerogative is grounded in the omniscience of Jesus. So we have a divine prerogative grounded in a divine attribute.
And that’s a logical connection. God’s omniscience is one of the attributes that qualifies him to judge sinners. He can judge sinners because he enjoys exhaustive knowledge of what we think, say, and do.
That’s not something which could be delegated to a finite creaturely agent. Rather, we’re accountable to God because God is our Maker, and God is competent to judge us because God knows absolutely everything about us.
c) Furthermore, this is reinforced by the fact that Jesus is quoting Jer 17:10:
I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds (Jer 17:10).
In Jer 17:10, Yahweh is the speaker. Yet Jesus applies that statement directly to himself.
iii) Therefore, Jesus is not only a “self” (as Tuggy defines it), but a divine self. Divine in the same sense that Yahweh is divine, as Scripture demarcates the unique divinity of Yahweh.
iv) But if the Father is a divine self, and Jesus is a divine self, then according to Tuggy’s own premises, that yields (at least) two divine “selves.”
(I’m bracketing the Holy Spirit for now since it only takes one counterexample to sink Tuggy’s contention.)
Re: tritheism. In your view, Father, Son, and Spirit qualitatively differ from each other. Thus, in your view none is numerically identical to either of the others. Thus, they are three, in your view. Three what? Each, in your view, has the divine nature; that is to say, each is a deity, a god. Complain about the term "being" all you want; the charge sticks without it.
Two problems:
i) I’m framing my answer the same way Tuggy himself chose to frame the question. That conclusion follows from Tuggy’s own position. If I’m a polytheist, that makes two of us. We’re in the same boat. Indeed, I’m sitting in Tuggy’s boat for the sake of argument.
ii) At the same time, Tuggy isn’t deriving his definition of polytheism from Scripture. Rather, Tuggy begins with his ersatz definition, which he imposes on the data.
However, the Bible erects a contrast between the true God and false gods. A statement like Rev 2:23 is inapplicable to false gods. False gods don’t search mind and heart, rendering to each man according to his deeds.
If the Father and the Son are two divine parties, that’s not polytheism as Scripture delineates polytheism.
I could use other examples to illustrate the same point.
Tuggy is, of course, at liberty to operate with his made-up definition of key terms, but I’m only concerned with Biblical theism, not fictional theism.
Like a mythmaker, Tuggy can always invent a make-believe world which he populates with his imaginary “God” and other fictitious characters. That’s not my own idea of how to do theology. And, ironically enough, Tuggy’s “God” would be just like the idols that Isaiah lampooned.
Excellent summation -- "Like a mythmaker, Tuggy can always invent a make-believe world which he populates with his imaginary “God” and other fictitious characters. That’s not my own idea of how to do theology. And, ironically enough, Tuggy’s “God” would be just like the idols that Isaiah lampooned."
ReplyDeleteYour opponent is another example of how the Internet gives too many people easy license to parade their so-called knowledge.
You probably have included this -- but where does this person carry on?
ReplyDeletehttp://trinities.org/blog/
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteI'm not committed to more than one god. Of course Jesus is a self - he must be, to be a human being. I deny that the Scripture asserts him to be divine in the same sense the Father is. The Son of God may be given, by God, the authority, as well as the necessary knowledge and power, to judge. And this may be the fulfillment of a prophecy about YHWH, for Jesus, the Son of God, acts as God's agent, on his behalf.
In short: "That’s not something which could be delegated to a finite creaturely agent" is a controversial premise, and one which there is good scriptural reason to doubt.
That you declare me committed to two gods shows that you have little grasp of unitarian theology.
So, only you are sitting in the polytheist boat. You have done nothing to get yourself out - you've only triumphantly asserted, groundlessly, that I'm in it too. If you spent less time dishing out insults, maybe you could think that through.
"deriving his definition of polytheism from Scripture"
Of course, there was no word "polytheism" in ancient times, so the Bible won't straight up define it. But polytheism simply means more than one god. And yes, I am using the scriptural concept of a god. Actually, in my view, there are two concepts of godhood in scripture - one which applies only to Yahweh, and another which applies to other beings.
DALE SAID:
ReplyDelete“I'm not committed to more than one god. Of course Jesus is a self - he must be, to be a human being. I deny that the Scripture asserts him to be divine in the same sense the Father is. The Son of God may be given, by God, the authority, as well as the necessary knowledge and power, to judge. And this may be the fulfillment of a prophecy about YHWH, for Jesus, the Son of God, acts as God's agent, on his behalf.”
i) An omniscient human being. A human being who knows everything everyboey ever said, did, or thought.
ii) BTW, what makes you think Jesus is merely the “fulfillment” of OT prophecy? Yahwistic passages applied to Jesus in the NT aren’t confined to prophecies, you know. Many of them are indicative statements about the nature of God, not predictions.
iii) And you continue to disregard the contradiction between your unitarian prooftexts and your agential harmonistic device. For your unitarian prooftexts go out of their way to reserve these attributes and prerogatives for God alone. That’s a defining feature of monotheism.
“In short: ‘That’s not something which could be delegated to a finite creaturely agent’ is a controversial premise, and one which there is good scriptural reason to doubt.”
You haven’t given good scriptural reason to doubt. Rather, you’ve taken your unitarian presuppositions for granted when you try to deflect evidence to the contrary.
“That you declare me committed to two gods shows that you have little grasp of unitarian theology.”
That’s a whiny complaint, not a counterargument.
“So, only you are sitting in the polytheist boat. You have done nothing to get yourself out - you've only triumphantly asserted, groundlessly, that I'm in it too. If you spent less time dishing out insults, maybe you could think that through.”
At this point you’re too overwrought to have a rational discussion. Perhaps, if you can get your emotions under control, we can resume the discussion.
“But polytheism simply means more than one god. And yes, I am using the scriptural concept of a god.”
That’s an assertion in search of an argument.