Dale's dilemma

DALE SAID:

About "qua", here's a basic question. Consider "Jesus qua divine is omniscient." and "Jesus qua human doesn't know some things." One may think this is better off than "Jesus does and doesn't know all." But no one has ever shown how.

We don’t need to show how. We only need to be faithful to God’s self-revelation.

The "qua" or "as" would normally be read as citing a cause or reason, i.e. because he's human he doesn't know some things, and because he's divine he knows all. D'oh! The contradiction comes right back.

What you’re pleased to call a “contradiction” is simply the revelation of Christ in Scripture.

And you’re in no position to assert a contradiction, for this would only be contradictory if the hypostatic union can’t account for that difference. Yet we no direct access to the theanthropic mind of Christ. We don’t know what it’s like to be him. We lack his indexical viewpoint. Theanthropic psychology is sui generis. That’s not something we can ever grasp from the inside out.

So the "qua" is supposed to qualify some term. Which? Subject? (Jesus-qua-human vs. Jesus-qua-divine) Copula? (is-qua-man vs. is-qua-human) or Predicate? (all-knowing-qua-divine vs. limited-in-knowledge-qua human). These seem the only options, and each has severe problems. Reformed philosopher Tom Senor shows some of them.

Of course, Douglas Blout responded to Senor’s position. Cf. “On the Incarnation of a Timeless God.”

You claim to discern some metaphysical distinction underlying some such move; I wonder what that is.

More to come.

Better to actually read Rauser's carefully reasoned piece.

Rauser’s article is a red herring. He’s attacking Rahner’s slogan that the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity, and vice versa. I didn’t say that. Indeed, that’s contrary to my stated position.

There's no hint of any "economic" vs. "immanent" Trinity idea in that passage, of course.

Well, if you want to be a stickler about it, there’s no hint of monotheism, much less unitarianism, in that passage. Taken by itself, 1 Cor 15:24-28 refers to a god called the father, who has a son, who temporarily reigns in his place.

That’s entirely consistent with polytheism, which had father gods and filial gods aplenty.

Indeed, that’s more than hypothetical. After quoting this and some similar passages, Margaret Barker says “there can be little doubt, in light of passages such as these, that Jesus has been identified with the second God…" The Great Angel (WJKP 1992), 152. 

Her reference to the “second God” distinguishes El/Elohim/Elyon (=the Father) from Yahweh (=the Son).

Do I agree with her? No. But 1 Cor 15:24-28, considered in isolation, no more “hints” at monotheism (much less unitarianism) than it does Trinitarianism or even polytheism.

That passage has to be contextualized by Pauline theology in general.

Given that change means intrinsic change...

Are Cambridge changes intrinsic changes?

(Tuggy says "no").

So, by your own belated admission, it's erroneous for you to say “change means intrinsic change.”

Therefore, the economic Trinity and/or the Son qua Incarnate can undergo real changes which, however, involve extrinsic (rather than intrinsic) properties vis-à-vis the immanent Trinity or the Son qua Son.

"Given that" means IF by "change we mean intrinsic change..." God created, and exercising a power is intrinsic change.

Can there be extrinsic changes? I suppose so. But our issue was whether the ec. vs. imm. distinction was needed to understand how God changes. My point is, if it works for extr. change, it does not for intr. change.

i) To begin with, you’re the one who cast the issue in terms of “change,” not me. And given your temporalist view of divine eternality, that makes sense on your position. But it doesn’t follow from my position.

ii) I’m talking about differences in status over time. Change may entail differentiation, but differentiation needn't entail change. 

iii) Apropos (ii), from the eternalist standpoint, there was never a time when these extrinsic properties weren’t divine properties (or relations) There was never a time when these differences did not obtain. Sub specie aeternitatis, there was never a time when God was not the Creator.

iv) And even if (arguendo) we were going to frame the issue in terms of change, you’ve given no reason why God’s creatorship couldn’t be an extrinsic property or Cambridge change rather than an intrinsic property.

For those who aren’t familiar with distinction, take the following comparison:

If I become a father, I make my late father a grandfather.

My father’s death is a real change, but his becoming a grandfather is a Cambridge change. That’s a change in his status. A relational predicate.

v) These are technical circumlocutions. In popular usage, we can speak of God changing. Ordinary language is vivid and imprecise.

Like many Christian philosophers, I hold that he does undergo change, given the existence of time. It's no good saying that "in himself" he doesn't change, but "in relation to others" he does. Given that change means intrinsic change, this is inconsistent...

i) One problem is that Tuggy’s claim about intrinsic change seems to ignore Cambridge changes.

ii) But there's a deeper problem. How is diachronic identity tenable on his view? Given his definition of numerical identity, vis-à-vis Leibniz's law, his temporalist view of God generates McTaggart’s paradox.

On the one hand, change demands sameness. A God who changes must be self-identical. Must be one and the same God both before and after the change–otherwise we have two Gods with different, incompatible properties rather than one God who changes.

On the other hand, change demands difference. Alterity. For change to obtain, the same God must be what he is not, since God must have a former property, then have a different, incompatible property later on.

But how can one God be both the same and different?

Far from safeguarding unitarianism, Tuggy’s combined assumptions yields serial polytheism. Every time God changes, you have a new and different God.

So Tuggy’s objections to the Trinity now circle back to bite him on the tuchus.

For Tuggy decided to quote 1 Cor 15:24-28 against Trinitarians. Yet that text specifies a change in the status of the Father, as we transition from the church age to the final state.

I’ve already discussed the conceptual resources available to Trinitarian eternalists. But for a unitarian temporalist like Tuggy, this involves real, intrinsic change. How can Tuggy can still say, consistent with Leibniz's law, that his God is one and the same God before and after the transitional phase? If the Son reigns during the church age, while the Father resumes his reign after the church age, and if, what is more, God (=the Father) subsists in time, then those are incompatible, rather than indiscernible, properties. How can Tuggy’s God be self-identical through time, given the intrinsic changes which he underwent?

I guess that “absolute identity” ain’t so “absolute” after all.

I think Randal Rauser has shown this distinction to be either trivial or mistaken. So, no, I don't think there's any such important distinction, despite the theological tradition of this sort of discourse. Steve, as you spell it out, one of them's timeless, the other in time. Therefore, the one Trinity isn't the other (since they differ). Therefore, there are (at least) two Trinities. Yikes!

A basic problem with this response is that it’s not confined to Trinitarianism. Although the immanent/economic distinction is conventionally associated with Trinitarian theology, a unitarian could evoke an analogous distinction. Tuggy happens to an open theist, so he denies the timeless eternality of God.

However, it’s quite possible for a unitarian to take a more “classical” view of God.  There's nothing in unitarianism per se that prejudges your position on the nature of God’s eternality.

So a classical unitarian would distinguish between God in himself and God in his relation to the world. God’s creatorship would be a economic relation. Between God qua God and God qua Creator.

Likewise, a unitarian could argue that God’s creatorship is a contingent property rather than an essential property. God was free to refrain from making the world, or free from making this world rather than some other world.

So we'd have a distinction between the immanent unitarian God and the economic unitarian God. Some things are true of one which don’t hold true for the other.

But doesn't that invite the same objection concerning numerical identity? Is the immanent unitarian God one and the same God as the economic unitarian God? They aren’t indiscernible.

According to Tuggy's application of Leibniz’s law, classical unitarianism generates two Gods.