Dale Tuggy has been leaving belated comments on an archived post of mine. Since readers may be unaware of that exchange, I'm going to repost my responses here:
"When we add in the claim, which I'm sure you'll agree to, that the Bible teaches monotheism, we get a perfectly clear apparent contradiction."
No, not a clear contradiction. Not even a prima facie contradiction. The Bible describes monotheism by contrasting the one true God with paganism, not by contrasting the one true God with Jesus.
"Steve, please find me one usage of 'God' or any other term in any language, before Nicea, which in the original context of that place and time, was meant to refer to a tripersonal god."
Nice exercise in misdirection, but patristic usage isn't my standard of comparison.
In addition, you're committing the word=concept fallacy. The Trinity is a theological construct based on many lines of Biblical evidence. It doesn't depend on use of the word "God" to specify the Trinity.
"Perhaps "doing exegetical theology" here means quoting authors with whom Steve agrees."
Dale, that's one of your dumb, uninformed responses:
i) To begin with, I don't just quote authors I agree with. I mount my own exegetical arguments. I've done so in detail in many posts responding to you. Is your memories a sieve?
ii) In addition, there's a difference between quoting scholarly opinion and quoting scholarly arguments.
"1. There is only one divine being. 2. Jesus is divine, and the Father is divine. 3. - (Jesus = Father) [it is not the case that f and s are numerically identical] Assuming any two, you'll see that the third must be false. I urge you to try out all the combos."
i) That's just you playing little word games. We could easily recast it as:
There is only one God. The Trinity is God.
The Father, Son, and Spirit share all the same divine attributes.
No contradiction in that formulation.
ii) In addition, I view the Trinity as a symmetry of persons who mirror each other. Are three mutual reflections one or three? They are both, considered from different viewpoints.
iii) Likewise, we need to resist the temptation of visualizing Trinitarian distinctions as if these were spatial boundaries or surfaces, like separate physical objects. If, a la classical theism, we're dealing with timeless, spaceless entities, then they aren't distinct in that sense.
"This is a perfect illustration of why I think your reading is uncharitable to the authors at hand, and that it takes a lot of chutzpah to put it out there are the correct reading. It's *apparently contradictory*, which we usually take as a very, very tough problem to overcome, unless we're willing to just say that the author is confused. The normal response is to carefully re-examine the various readings that imply the contradiction."
Dale, God is not an ordinary object of knowledge, like a tree or a game of checkers. God is the most complex being in all reality. We'd expect God to be baffling in some respects. God is not a merely man-sized object of knowledge.
This isn't like harmonizing historical accounts, where we're dealing with mundane events which we could fully grasp if we were there to see it unfold in real time and space. It's not like reconstructing questions from answers, when we only have one side of the correspondence (e.g. Pauline letters.).
You don't even open your mind to the possibility that God is bigger than your mind. But unless God is bigger than your mind, what kind of "God" is he?
Like a 9/11 Truther, you've developed a conspiratorial narrative that's become plausible to you. Hence, you dismiss any appeal to "mystery" as special pleading. But that doesn't take seriously the transcendent nature of God.
"No. Rather, the point is that if some community lacks any term meant to express some concept, then it is likely that they have no such concept."
That's like saying if anthropologists discover an Amazonian tribe with no word for jealousy, then they have no concept of jealousy. That's a ridiculous inference.
"It needn't be a patristic example. Could be NT too. But we both know that there is no such word or phrase."
Dale, complex concepts are not reducible to single words or phrases. At best, there can be technical words or jargon that stand for the concept, but you wouldn't know that from the word or phrase in isolation.
The question at issue isn't the use of a word or phrase, but the logical implications of the Biblical data.
"1. There is only one divine being. 2. Jesus is divine, and the Father is divine. 3. - (Jesus = Father) [it is not the case that f and s are numerically identical] Assuming any two, you'll see that the third must be false. I urge you to try out all the combos."
ReplyDelete"That's just you playing little word games."
Um, no. That's logic, Steve. Careful reasoning, parsing the claims *you* were making, with the addition of 1. Instead of admitting the obvious, that we have an inconsistent triad here, you change the subject to different claims:
"There is only one God.
The Trinity is God.
The Father, Son, and Spirit share all the same divine attributes."
Sure, those seem logically consistent. Any Trinity theory requires the first two. But it's unclear how to take the third, since you just subtracted the claim that those three are distinct. For all the above says, one may take those three names to co-refer.
"Instead of admitting the obvious, that we have an inconsistent triad here, you change the subject to different claims."
DeleteDale, you're not entitled to dictate the terms of the debate. One of your stock tactics is to tendentious frame the issue in a way that's bound to yield only certain kinds of answers. You artificially restrict the range of options. You erect a false dichotomy by the categories you use. You then impose that on unwary Christians.
Yes, I reserve the right to recast the claim. You're an ambush predator. Like a crooked lawyer, you ask loaded questions.
It's trivially easy to generate an inconsistent triad for many coherent positions if you manipulate terms and definitions.
Yup. You got me. Caught me red-handed dictating terms, and manipulating terms and definitions.
DeleteGo ahead, you can reserve the rights, when losing an argument, to talk about something else instead, tossing out abuse to draw attention away you. No one will begrudge you those rights, on your own blog.
Dale, the accusation of losing the argument begs the question of whether your formulation of the (alleged) problem is accurate or normative. That is not a given.
DeleteIt's standard in philosophical argument to challenge how one side frames the issue.
"I mount my own exegetical arguments."
ReplyDeleteYes, in your own mind, such are quite convincing. I haven't found, though, that you really go beyond proof-texting, just tossing out a bunch of verses and going "SEEE?! It says what I say. And if you disagree you're a liar or are stupid."
"I view the Trinity as a symmetry of persons who mirror each other. Are three mutual reflections one or three? They are both, considered from different viewpoints."
Eh... OK. Good luck finding this in the creeds or the Bible, though.
" we need to resist the temptation of visualizing Trinitarian distinctions as if these were spatial boundaries or surfaces, like separate physical objects."
Off-topic. Who is this addressed to? To someone who thinks the Trinity is a physical object?
Now to the part what you rationalize your acceptance of apparent contradictions in theology:
"God is not an ordinary object of knowledge, like a tree or a game of checkers. God is the most complex being in all reality. We'd expect God to be baffling in some respects. God is not a merely man-sized object of knowledge. "
I agree with all of that. Doesn't follow, though, that we'll be stuck with apparent contradictions in thinking about God.
"You don't even open your mind to the possibility that God is bigger than your mind."
Huge, obvious straw man. You are welcome to search anything I've ever written on this topic, to see if you can find where I say or assume that God is fully understandable by me.
"Like a 9/11 Truther, you've developed a conspiratorial narrative that's become plausible to you. Hence, you dismiss any appeal to "mystery" as special pleading. But that doesn't take seriously the transcendent nature of God."
Yawn. Ad hominem.
And it just doesn't follow, from the fact that God is in various ways transcendent, that we'll be faced with irresolvable apparent contradictions in interpreting the Bible. Just observe the big logical gap between those two claims.
"Yes, in your own mind, such are quite convincing. I haven't found, though, that you really go beyond proof-texting, just tossing out a bunch of verses and going "SEEE?! It says what I say. And if you disagree you're a liar or are stupid.'"
DeleteIronically, you just corroborated the allegation by caricaturing and misrepresenting the nature of my exegetical arguments. You're an incorrigible demagogue. Rather than engage the exegetical arguments (because you can't), you resort to intellectual shortcuts by (mis)characterizing how I argued.
"Eh... OK. Good luck finding this in the creeds or the Bible, though."
i) That's a diversionary tactic, Dale. The creeds aren't my standard of comparison.
ii) There's no reason why a 21C Trinitarian should limit himself to the conceptual resources of 4C bishops or church fathers. The progress of philosophy, math, and science supplies theology with many new and useful analogies to illustrate settled doctrines.
iii) In addition, you fail to grasp the nature of creeds. These are summaries of doctrine. They aren't detailed explanations.
iv) Finally, you fail to grasp the distinction between Biblical teaching and analogies that illustrate Biblical teaching.
"That's like saying if anthropologists discover an Amazonian tribe with no word for jealousy, then they have no concept of jealousy. That's a ridiculous inference."
ReplyDeleteYes, that would be ridiculous. But that's because the people of those tribe are humans, and so we rightly assume that they have the same basic stock of concepts all humans have. In the case at hand, the concept of a tripersonal god, this is a concept which most people-groups, historically, have not had. Again, the point is one about evidence. A typical sign of lacking a concept is not having a word that expresses it. But we still might, all things considered, conclude that they have the concept after all.
But in the first three centuries, there is a mainstream catholic view about the one God, that this is the Father. They never say, imply, or assume that the one God is the Trinity. Instead, they make the one god *a member of* the divine triad, not that triad itself. This is clear in all Trinity-talk up past Nicea. http://trinities.org/blog/10-steps-towards-getting-less-confused-about-the-trinity-8-trinity-vs-trinity/
"the logical implications of the Biblical data"
Yes, this is the issue. Your theology needs the Bible to logically imply that the one god is tripersonal. Hard to get that when it is implies the numerical identity of the one god with the Father. He isn't the Trinity. http://trinities.org/blog/how-trinity-theories-conflict-with-the-new-testament/ Suddenly, around the time of early Augustine, it gets to be popular to use "God" to mean the Trinity, the tripersonal god mandated after 381. The usage is obvious, if you think the one god is tripersonal.
i) So you had to backpedal from your hasty generalization.
Deleteii) Since the concept of a tripersonal God is a revealed truth, we wouldn't expect human cultures to have preexisting nomenclature for that concept.
iii) You also have a Da Vinci Code view of church history. But Nicea didn't drop out of the sky.
The ante-Nicene fathers weren't unitarians. They didn't view Jesus as merely human. They didn't view him as a merely exalted creature.
They were groping with crude formulations of the Trinity and the two-natures of Christ. They had recourse to the varied philosophical resources at their disposal. Most ante-Nicene fathers were men of no great intellectual distinction. They did the best they could, given their limitations. Their formulations are defective, but they were not intentionally unitarian. They are laboring to say something much more about Jesus than unitarianism allows for.
i) No, as usual, you misunderstood.
Deleteii) Duh.
iii) LOL. My view of Nicea is based on the works of our best current historians, Steve.
"The ante-Nicene fathers weren't unitarians. They didn't view Jesus as merely human. They didn't view him as a merely exalted creature."
This shows that you don't understand that the defining thesis of unitarian theology is the identity of the one God and the Father alone. Whether Jesus is a "mere man" or an "exalted creature" are additional issues. Some unitarians hold to various two-nature speculations, others don't. Some will call Jesus a creature or created being, others won't. Since I expect you here to shriek that I'm using a goofy definition of "unitarian", I will point out to you that many famous modern-era unitarians, such as very well-known authors like Biddle, Clarke, Emlyn, Worcester, and others who have been (not well) described as "Arians" and "Semi-Arians" were this sort, who believed that Jesus existed long before, or always before, his human career. But they were, all agreed, unitarians. Whether or not Jesus pre-existed his human career is an in-house fight within the unitarian camp to this day.
Yes, the pre-Nicenes were unitarian, and that the identified the one God with the Father, not with the Trinity. I have shown this for a number of famous early catholics, purposely avoiding the so-called "monarchians". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hnlw4iMhE8 I have shown it in particular detail, in various blog posts, etc., for the early catholic heavyweights Tertullian and Origen.
"They were groping with crude formulations of the Trinity"
Demonstrably false, if by "Trinity" you mean a tripersonal god, in some sense containing three equally divine Persons. Inconvenient for your theology, I know. But theory must yield to fact. This comforting story that *really* they were sort of feeling their way to the post-381 formulations, believing but unable to express what later trinitarians said - it just has no basis in history.
"and the two-natures of Christ"
True, at least by the time of the logos theologians. But I don't think the catholic "monarchians" fit the mold, though. Some such seem to have held, like present-day biblical unitarians, that it was God himself, the Father working through Jesus. He was "the divine nature" (being) at work in Jesus.
"not intentionally unitarian"
Not in the sense of anti-trinitarian, no. There was no such doctrine to react against. But the more sophisticated catholics, such as Origen, were very pointed in identifying the one God with the Father alone. e.g. He explicitly says that only the Father, not the Son, is ho theos, the Son is only theos, a god, a being who is divine because of another. And the Father is greater, first in rank, etc. http://trinities.org/blog/trinitarian-or-unitarian-8-origen-on-god-vs-a-god/
http://trinities.org/blog/trinitarian-or-unitarian-5-origens-against-celsus/
Tertullian thinks the the Father literally existed before the Son, and that the Son only has a portion of the entire divine substance. http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-episode-11-tertullian-the-unitarian/
He explicitly says that only the Father, not the Son, is ho theos, the Son is only theos, a god, a being who is divine because of another.
DeleteHow many true gods are there?
"This shows that you don't understand that the defining thesis of unitarian theology is the identity of the one God and the Father alone. Whether Jesus is a 'mere man' or an 'exalted creature' are additional issues."
DeleteDale, this is yet another example of you degenerating into special pleading. The definition of unitarianism didn't take place in a vacuum. Defining unitarianism in terms of "the one God and Father alone" didn't take place in a vacuum. Rather, that is defined with a view to excluding Jesus from the category of the one and only God. Whatever else he is, Jesus is in no true sense "God." Rather, the Father alone is on one side of the divine/creature divide while Jesus and everything else is on the other side of the divine/creature divide.
That's hardly an "additional issue." Rather, the exclusionary definition has its eye on Jesus all the time.
That, however, is not how the ante-Nicene fathers view the Son.
"Inconvenient for your theology, I know."
Do you just suffer from an irrepressible urge to say stupid things? I'm not a high churchman. My Trinitarian theology doesn't depend on patristic precedent for validation.
"This comforting story that *really* they were sort of feeling their way to the post-381 formulations, believing but unable to express what later trinitarians said - it just has no basis in history."
That wasn't my argument. Point is, they weren't feeling their way to unitarianism. Rather, they were trying to balance monotheism with the deity of the Son (and Spirit).
In the other thread Tuggy said:
ReplyDelete"Steve, you're right about this: someone is missing the point here. It *could* be the PhD in Philosophy who has taught courses in metaphysics and logic."
In this thread:
“Yes, the pre-Nicenes were unitarian, and that the identified the one God with the Father, not with the Trinity. I have shown this for a number of famous early catholics, purposely avoiding the so-called "monarchians". I have shown it in particular detail, in various blog posts, etc., for the early catholic heavyweights Tertullian and Origen.”
In addition to the trinitarian philosophers Steve listed in the previous thread, we may add that Tuggy claims a more nuanced understanding than a wide and diverse range of experts in Patristics, early Christology, extra-canonical Christian texts, and heresiology like Simon Gathercole, Michael Kruger, Charles Hill, Chris Tilling etc.
Tuggy is the unitarian Earl Doherty. Doherty’s tactic is to demand evidence that x believed Jesus was a human. When multiple lines of evidence are pointed out to him (references to blood, flesh, the word human, etc) Doherty asks “Well why doesn’t x just say he’s a regular old human?” Because no one believed he was a regular old human. They also didn’t believe he was just only God. Tuggy and Doherty blind themselves to half of the evidence.
Ehrman, another apostate, is fond of similar statements:
“You're right about this: someone is missing the point here. It *could* be the PhD whose dissertation was on textual criticism and who has taught courses in Greek and the Alexandrian text type.”
There are many contradictions that Tuggy hasn’t gotten around to yet:
1) John 1:18 says no one has ever seen God. John 4:12 echoes this teaching. This is in obvious contradiction with Ex 24 and the “Ancient of Days” of Daniel. Clearly the NT authors did not share the OT author’s belief about a God who can be seen.
2) Jesus taught to love enemies, the OT God commanded genocide. Again, the NT contradicts the OT.
3) NT passages like Paul in Athens in Acts 17 seem to teach that there is only one God, yet this teaching is found nowhere in the Hebrew Bible and is in fact repeatedly contradicted by it.
The conclusion is clear: the god of the OT is not the Father of the NT.
Now that this blogpost has slowed down, here's a link to an excerpt of E.W. Hengstenberg's book Christology in the Old Testament
ReplyDeleteThe Angel of the LORD by E.W. Hengstenberg
http://trinitynotes.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-angel-of-lord-by-ew-hengstenberg.html