Does Isaian monotheism contradict the Trinity? One way of assessing that question is to consider the alternatives. From a unitarian perspective, who does Isaiah single out as the one true God?
Yes, Isaiah says “Yahweh” is the only true God. But who is Yahweh? Who (or what) does that designation stand for?
In principle, there are varieties of unitarianism (unitarianisms) which nominate opposing candidates for that singular distinction.
A unitarian could be a modalist. He denies the deity of the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are temporary projections of the one true God, who stands behind them.
A unitarian could be a process modalist. He could believe the Father, Son, and Spirit represent successive stages in the evolution of God.
A unitarian could believe that Jesus is the real God, while the Father and the Spirit are creatures or agents of the Son.
Or a unitarian might believe the Spirit is the real God.
More conventionally, a unitarian might believe the Father is the real God.
Does a unitarian reading of Isaiah favor one competing candidate over another? By definition, unitarians don’t believe Isaiah uses Trinitarian categories. That would be anachronistic.
So Isaiah doesn’t single out the deity of the Father, to the exclusion of the Son, or vice versa. From a unitarian perspective, he doesn’t employ that framework even for purposes of contrast. It’s not “God the Father” is the true God,” while Jesus is his agent. For that would still be framing the issue in Trinitarian nomenclature, even to oppose the Trinity.
Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThis is shooting from the cuff, to put it nicely. If you would read by ONE serious unitarian source, you just wouldn't raise this objection.
All unitarians identify the one God with the Father, on the basis of numerous NT passages. Yep - I'm too lazy, or rather, busy, to list them for you. Again, read a book, any decent unitarian book.
Are some unitarians modalists? Some are modalists about the Spirit but not the Son. Some ancient monarchians held views that are probably unitarian, though that's a dark subject. But the typical "Sabellian" of theological lore is probably not a unitarian, if each "person" of the Trinity is mode of God on that view. Seemingly, that would rule out God and the Father being numerically identical - if God's not a mode of anything, then the Father can't be mode, and be identical with God.
Having said that, there's considerable murkiness in the common rhetoric about "modalism" and "Sabellianism," and I think sometimes people mean a view which could be unitarian, e.g. Son and Spirit are modes of God, that is, of the Father.
Steve, I think you are wasting your time on Tuggy. He has shown that he is incapable of going to the Scriptures to prove his humanitarian unitarainism. This is why he tries to appeal to philosophy, but even here he is quite unsuccessful since you have done a great job of taking him to task, showing that this doesn't help his case anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt is really getting tiring to see Tuggy constantly misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting your points. Even worse is that I have yet to see him quote Scriptures to prove that his position is Biblical.
Maybe it is time to simply ignore Tuggy and let him find someone else who will buy into his human traditions that do nothing more than pervert the Holy Scriptures.
I am going to repost this from another thread so that Tuggy doesn't fail to see it since I really do want him to answer this.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when Tuggy tries to do exegesis:
Steve, this is a textbook case of question begging. Humanitarian unitarians don't think that the NT actually does ascribe creation to Jesus, and subordinationists think those texts make him the instrument of God's (the Father's) creation - God being the creator in an ultimate sense, and the pre-human Jesus in an instrumental sense. Both would agree on the uniqueness of the Father, and of course both with agree with trinitarians that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. Again, both agree that the Father, YHWH, is god in a sense which not other being ever has or will be, and that he knows all. Again, in an ultimate sense, salvation is from the Father, but of course it is through the Son. So no, as far as I can see, unitarians don't have any obvious problem with Isaiah.
Let's see now. Isaiah says that Yahweh created all things by himself, that he did so all alone, and that creation is the work of his own hands - cf. Isa. 42:5; 44:24; 45:12, 18; 48:13.
Job also confirms that Yahweh created the heavens by himself - Job 9:8.
Isaiah further says that he formed his people for himself, for his own glory - Isa. 43:6-7, 20-21.
The NT, however, says that all things were created in/through/for the Son, and that the Son is personally sustaining all creation by his own powerful word- cf. Colossians 1:16-17; Heb. 1:2-3.
Hebrews 1:10-12 takes this a step further and applies Psalm 102:25-27 to the Son in order to describe him as the unchanging Creator and Sustainer of all things. However, Psalm 102 refers to Yahweh creating and sustaining all things, and further says that the heavens are the works of Yahweh's hands.
Yet all of this is applied to the Son's role in creating and sustaining the creation!
So let us summarize what Isaiah and the rest of the OT says concerning Yahweh's role in creating and sustaining all things, and compare that to what the NT says about Jesus:
Yahweh alone created and sustains all things.
Yahweh created the heavens and the earth by his own hands.
Yahweh formed things for himself, for his own glory.
Yet according to the NT, all things were created in/through/for Jesus.
The NT even quotes an OT passage which describes Yahweh as the unchanging Creator and Sustainer of all things and applies that to Christ!
Now Tuggy, can you please reconcile the explicit testimony of the OT, specifically Isaiah, that Yahweh created all things by his own hands with the NT teaching that Jesus created and sustains all things? If Jesus is not Yahweh, but a mere human being as you erroneously believe, then can you please show us how you don’t end up with a clear-cut contradiction when the OT says Yahweh created and sustains all things by himself? How could this be if the NT says Yahweh used a creature to both create and sustain all things?
Sam, briefly: you precisely lay out why subordinationist unitarians think that the Father (YHWH) is the ultimate source of the cosmos, but that he created via the agency of the pre-human Jesus.
ReplyDeleteReading the texts as you do, it looks like you must either accept this traditional Origen / Clarke etc. interpretation, or else you must conclude that Jesus and YHWH are one self, which is not an orthodox trinitarian view. (However, it is a view many evangelicals take, sometimes based on Bauckham's confused claims about Jesus having or being in "the identity of" God.)
You think that both Jesus and God created? Then either, they are one and the same, or there were two creators, contra the OT.
About the Christ-creator texts: briefly, most of these unitarians read as having to do with Paul's central theme of the new creation - Christ is the agent of that. We take the OT at its word that there was one self, one intelligent agent, who created, without help, i.e. God himself, with no helpers. Unitarians adopt different readings of John 1. But my own view is that the logos is supposed to be a divine attribute, and is not personally identical to Jesus. There's much OT and Apoc. precedent for that sort of idea, in my view.
I will not meet your demand for a proof-text salvo; if you think that will solve anything... I'm not sure what to tell you, other than, in the words of Mr. T, I pity the fool that tries to have any serious theological argument with you.
Sam, briefly: you precisely lay out why subordinationist unitarians think that the Father (YHWH) is the ultimate source of the cosmos, but that he created via the agency of the pre-human Jesus.
ReplyDeleteReading the texts as you do, it looks like you must either accept this traditional Origen / Clarke etc. interpretation, or else you must conclude that Jesus and YHWH are one self, which is not an orthodox trinitarian view. (However, it is a view many evangelicals take, sometimes based on Bauckham's confused claims about Jesus having or being in "the identity of" God.)
You think that both Jesus and God created? Then either, they are one and the same, or there were two creators, contra the OT.
About the Christ-creator texts: briefly, most of these unitarians read as having to do with Paul's central theme of the new creation - Christ is the agent of that. We take the OT at its word that there was one self, one intelligent agent, who created, without help, i.e. God himself, with no helpers. Unitarians adopt different readings of John 1. But my own view is that the logos is supposed to be a divine attribute, and is not personally identical to Jesus. There's much OT and Apoc. precedent for that sort of idea, in my view.
I will not meet your demand for a proof-text salvo; if you think that will solve anything... I'm not sure what to tell you, other than, in the words of Mr. T, I pity the fool that tries to have any serious theological argument with you.
To Dale - Pt. 1
ReplyDeleteI am sorry Dale but your response once again doesn't address my questions. As is your habit, you ran away from addressing my points to appealing to your understanding of what a self is. Sorry buddy, but I wont let you off that easy.
Let me repeat what I said so as to show you the conundrum that your appeal to the concept of self puts you in.
Hebrews 1:10-12 quotes a Yahweh text, specifically Psalm 102:25-27, and applies that to Christ. This particular Psalm not only affirms that Yahweh created and sustains all things, but also contrasts him to creation by highlighting the fact that, unlike creation, Yahweh remains the same.
Moreover, the passages from the OT which I mentioned clearly affirm that Yahweh alone created and sustains all things. This means that you can't brush aside Hebrew's application of Psalm 102 to Christ on the concept of agency.
Your claim that unitarians read these texts which speak of Christ creating as a reference to the new creation further confirms what I said about your (and their) inability to do sound exegesis. In the first place, Psalm 102:25-27 IS NOT SPEAKING ABOUT THE NEW CREATION, but of the initial creation, i.e. "IN THE BEGINNING you laid the foundations of the earth..."
The second reason this cannot be speaking of the new creation is that Psalm 102 says that this specific creation that Yahweh has made is wearing out and that Yahweh will roll up the heavens and earth, something which is not true of the new creation.
So we are now back to square one. Since you deny that Jesus is Yahweh, how then do you reconcile that with the fact that Hebrews 1:10-12 applies a Yahweh text to Jesus? How could this author ascribe Psalm 102:25-27 which speaks of Yahweh laying the foundations of the earth, and says that the heavens are the work of Yahweh's hands, not someone else's hands, to Jesus if Jesus is not Yahweh?
Continued in the next post.
To Dale - Pt. 2
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you admit that Jesus is Yahweh how then do you reconcile that with the NT affirmation that Jesus is personal distinct from the Father whom you believe is the only who is Yahweh?
Hopefully, you won't dance around my question this time and try to actually engage it.
And if you are interested, I would be more than happy to show you why your view that the logos of John 1 is a divine attribute, and not Jesus Christ, is contextually and exegetically absurd. I hope you accept my offer, since it would give me great pleasure to further illustrate to others why you are incapable of accurately exegeting the text of Holy Scripture, which is why you are too busy philosophizing over identity and self in order to undermine the explicit Biblical witness to God’s Triunity.
Face it, the only reason why you won't meet my "prooftext salvo" with Scripture is because you know you can't do so, and therefore try to mock and attack myself and others who can.
Yes, I do pity the fool who thinks that s/he can actually get you to engage the text of Scripture with integrity and accuracy. Your idolatrous fascination with human reasoning prohibits you from letting God speak freely and to be who he has revealed himself to be, which is not the false god that you worship.