Friday, July 01, 2011

The unitarian conundrum


Dale Tuggy has two methodological tricks for deflecting Trinitarian prooftexts. He has a hermeutical trick by which he relegates all divine ascriptions to Jesus to merely agential ascriptions. And he has a philosophical trick by which he preemptively discounts all divine ascriptions to Jesus because they (allegedly) violate the law of identity.

Unfortunately for him, his two methodological tricks are working at cross-purposes.

I. The epistemic indiscernibility of identicals

If any divine property or prerogative, however apparently unique to God, can be reassigned to a creaturely agent, then there’s no way to tell the difference between what’s God and what’s not God. At a noetic level, the Creator and the creature become perceptually indiscernible.

II. The ontic indiscernibility of identicals

And the dilemma, if possible, runs even deeper. If mere creaturely agents can actually assume divine properties and divine prerogatives, then the Creator and the creature become metaphysically indiscernible.

Tuggy’s monotheism quickly degenerates into pantheism. A chain-of-being in which divinity is a matter of degree rather than kind. 

4 comments:

  1. This point is excellent -- II. The ontic indiscernibility of identicals
    And the dilemma, if possible, runs even deeper. If mere creaturely agents can actually assume divine properties and divine prerogatives, then the Creator and the creature become metaphysically indiscernible.


    So where is Dale's response to this?

    LIke I said before, you are doing fine exposing the gaping holes in the man's thinking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, again, it couldn't be that Tuggy's mistaken - he's using "tricks"! That devil!

    Steve, this charge at the bottom here is wildly wrong. Nothing I say commits me to God and anything else being indistinguishable. And pantheism? That's really flailing.

    Take any term at all that can be used to describe me (other than "identical to Dale") - just about all can be used to describe other people, right? You could even take my very name, and apply to someone else you take to be a worthless sophist - "That's guy's another Dale Tuggy!" We all understand this usage, and it doesn't too often confuse.

    So, the point that terms usually applied to YHWH can be applied to others is a really pedestrian point about language, and moreover one which is well-attested in the scriptures. e.g. others called gods, addressed as God.

    But this doesn't make it impossible to distinguish YHWH from others. Nor are all terms used of God in the Bible so flexibly used. I'll address that point in your previous post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dale,

    You’re not trying very hard to represent the opposing position:

    i) It’s not merely the isolated use of divine names, but their contextual usage. Names which, in context, denote the true God. Names which figure in larger passages that refer to the true God, passages that demarcate the true God from the pagan pantheon.

    ii) You yourself have schizophrenic methodology in which you invoke certain passages in Isaiah which denote the true God, but when those same passages are applied to Jesus, you deny the original denotation. You constantly play both sides of the fence.

    On the one hand you cited them as unitarian prooftexts to demarcate you unitarian “God.” On the other hand, when the NT assigns the same passages to Jesus, you suddenly deny that these passages serve to demarcate your unitarian “God.” So it just becomes a shellgame with you.

    iii) It also goes beyond divine names to divine attributes, divine prerogatives, and divine actions.

    iv) You’ve also been resorting a principle of substitutability whereby anything that’s true of Yahweh (or the Father) can also be reassigned a creaturely agent.

    You may say that doesn’t apply across the board, but in practice you invoke substitutability for every type of ascription that Yahweh/the Father and Jesus share in common, no matter how exalted. So whenever you need to bail out unitarianism, God and Jesus become identical or indiscernibly the same.

    ReplyDelete
  4. but when those same passages are applied to Jesus, you deny the original denotation.

    Yes, context is everything - passage, book, Bible. Take "Lord" in the NT, which can denote either Jesus or God. Who does it refer to? Depends entirely on the context.

    It also goes beyond divine names to divine attributes, divine prerogatives, and divine actions.

    Well, sure! This is of course in my analyses, previously linked. I've carefully read and though through this book which gives an extended presentation of these sorts of arguments for "the deity of Christ." Tragically, their understanding of this seems to be a straight up contradiction - Jesus is God, and he isn't.

    A point I should highlight is what was presupposed in my previous "Dale" example. I do *not* think that it's all a jumble - that, e.g. "Yahweh" or "ho theos" just randomly applies to either Jesus or to the one God. No, the pattern is that some terms are overwhelmingly used of f and not s, and others are used for f alone, and never any other. (Of course, some terms are used ONLY of the Son, e.g. Son of man, Son of God, Jesus.) Samuel Clarke, in the first section of his book, goes through these regarding f for the entire NT (!). These include: "Father" (in the NT) and "the one true God" and some other expressions like "God almighty" (pantocrator). Also, "God" is overwhelmingly used for f, not for s or for t in the NT. This has been noted, e.g. by trinitarian evangelical Murray Harris, as well as by a great many unitarians. So, this is why I have no problem at all distinguishing the two. Nor am I reading the Bible's authors as confusing the two. They don't confuse them at all - they're very scrupulous in distinguishing the two, as a general rule. A shining example of this is John's gospel - every passage which people misread as implying j = g includes statements supposing them to differ, to be numerically two. The biggest exception, I think, would be some cases of "kurios" in Paul, where it is less than clear whether he means f or s (again, interesting, it never refers to t, according to all careful readers, trinitarian and not).

    Just to be clear: I agree that there are cases where Jesus is called or addressed as "God," and even where it's implied that his name is "YHWH" (though importantly, he's been *given* that name by God).

    As to the deeds args, I've already said this, but generally the "Only God can do X" premise is false *according to the Bible*. e.g. forgive sins. In one of the gospels Jesus says he's been given authority to do this by God, which disposes of the argument that only God himself can do that. Another e.g. raises the dead - Jesus says in John and elsewhere that he does these things by the power of God, that it is God doing it through him. etc.

    ReplyDelete