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Monday, April 09, 2018

Gored by the horns of a dilemma

In response to a post of mine, apostate Dale Tuggy said:

What folks like Steve here imagine to be obvious to the reader - that Jesus is claiming to be the one God, the god of Israel - was not obvious to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, etc. - all of whom explicitly hold the one God to be the Father - not the Trinity, not Jesus, and not the Logos. What not obvious right away to careful, smart, informed readers, is just not obvious in a text! 
We know that the 'logos' theorists of the 100s and 200s held the logos to explicitly be 'another god,' 'a second god' (or: a second 'god' - see the difference?), and less than the one God in (for various authors) power, knowledge, authority, divinity, and even (for theorists before Origen) less old than him, having come into existence.

I've already responded to this at length, but I'd like to approach it from a different angle:

1. I didn't claim that the deity of Christ is "obvious" in every NT writing. And my position doesn't require that.

2. But if we're going to cast the issue in those terms, then Dale's argument is counterproductive. It isn't that they thought just one thing was obvious–rather, they thought two things were obvious, and they were struggling to harmonize them. On the one hand they thought Scripture obviously teaches monotheism, while on the other hand they thought Scripture obviously teaches the divinity of Christ. 

Even by Dale's own admission, they obviously didn't think Jesus was just a human male. That's not how you characterize "another god" or a "second god". So their position is far removed from Dale's humanitarian unitarianism. 

3. Let's put this is a larger context. In principle, there are several different strategies for dealing with dilemmas:

i) You can affirm the dilemma. You can say this is paradox that surpasses human reason. There's nothing we can do to mitigate the tension. That's the position of Christians like John Owen and James Anderson.

However, you can defend it by saying that if we have good reason to believe both horns of a dilemma, then we're warranted in affirming both horns even if that generates a dilemma. Moreover, you can say that high Christology is not exceptional in this regard. Paradox is commonplace in physics, mathematics, and logic. 

ii) You can affirm both horns of the dilemma, but deny that it's a dilemma. You can marshal arguments to relieve the tension. You demonstrate (to your own satisfaction) that it's not paradoxical.

iii) You can deny the dilemma by denying one horn of the dilemma. There are Christological heresies that say Jesus was apparently human but really divine, or–conversely–that Jesus was apparently divine but really human.

iv) You can relieve the tension by relativizing both horns of the dilemma. Take a chain-of-being ontology in which divinity is quantitative rather than qualitative. Trees have more divinity than rocks, animals have more divinity than trees, humans have more divinity than animals, angels have more divinity than humans, while the Son has more divinity than angels but less divinity than the Father. It's a matter of degree rather than kind. Gradations of divinity. That works in Neoplatonism. What makes God differ from creatures is that God has more God stuff than creatures. It's not an absolute categorical distinction. 

That's what the logos-theorists seem to be doing. On the one hand they affirm monotheism, but not in the absolute monadic sense (e.g. Maimonides, Al-Ghazali) . On the other hand they affirm the deity of Christ, but not in the absolute sense of co-equality, auto-theos (e.g. Helm, Warfield). It's a mediating position. A compromise position.

4. Finally, the NT is addressed to Jews and gentiles alike, but that presents a challenge. Gentiles had no objection to affirming the divinity of Christ, but the danger is to recast that in polytheistic terms. (The same problem persists today when evangelizing Hindus.) So the NT uses traditional monotheistic language, which reaffirms OT theism, yet it then extends that exclusive language to Jesus. NT writers have to strike a balance to avoid falling into either one of two opposing errors. Using traditional formulations that exclude polytheism while including Jesus within the same formulations. That generates a prima facie dilemma, yet the NT is not an exercise in philosophical theology, but a witness to history in the self-revelation of divine action. 

8 comments:

  1. "1. I didn't claim that the deity of Christ is "obvious" in every NT writing. And my position doesn't require that."

    Retreat!

    Are you really conceding that? So then, a Christian who in good faith looks at the NT and says, "Gee guys, I know you think this means that Jesus is implying that he's God himself - but I think, instead, that he's just saying that he is God's human Messiah. Those implications you see there - I just don't see them." - this person, in your view, is *not* denying the obvious?

    If so, I agree!

    But next paragraph, alas:
    "On the one hand they thought Scripture obviously teaches monotheism, while on the other hand they thought Scripture obviously teaches the divinity of Christ."

    So, you're taking it back? Even (you think) 2nd c. mainstream Christians thought that the NT implies clearly that Jesus is God himself? Or are you here falling back on a weaker thesis, relying on ambiguity of "the divinity of Christ," so that what they thought was obvious was only that Jesus divine *in some sense or other.* That is true, I think, but most didn't think he was divine in the way that the one true God is divine. The non-patripassian monarchians, as I understand them, basically thought that Jesus was "divine" in having God's power, his Word, working through and in him.

    So in that time "the deity of Christ" that was widely agreed on was compatible with his being "a mere man." But the Logos theorists pushed a stronger claim - a pre-existing Logos taking on "flesh" (or a man? or... human nature which ain't a man?), and as time went on (mid 3rd c. or so) began to prevail. But the then (late 2nd - early 3rd c.) agreed on "deity of Christ" doesn't get a dilemma going - it doesn't apparently rule out humanity.

    Anyway, feel free to clarify what you're saying is obvious.

    You seem to not realize, though, that the idea that Jesus is divine *in the exact same way or to the same degree that the one God is divine*, implying that he is the one God himself - this was an outlier in both 2nd and 3rd c. At that time, folks like Tertullian and Origen ruthlessly pummeled it for good and bad reasons. E.g. good - "The Father and I are one" is not to be read as saying they're one and the same being, which is absurd. Rather, as Origen says, Jesus and God are "two in number." E.g. bad - God is obviously impassible by his essence, yet Jesus suffered. (I think that first part is a mere speculation.) Origen is obviously correct, and Jesus and God/the Father differ, so must be two beings - so, they can't be the same god. Being the same god would require being (numerically) the same, and this would require that they can't differ in any way.

    The confused "Jesus is God" apologist ought to take care not to project that confusion into 2nd and 3rd c. sources - a context where that confusion was relatively rare.

    "So the NT uses traditional monotheistic language, which reaffirms OT theism, yet it then extends that exclusive language to Jesus."

    Yes, in a sense, in extending "Lord" to be used for the lesser figure of Ps 110:1. But the idea that the NT somehow strikes a happy medium between monotheism and polytheism (a baffling piece of rhetoric, if you think about it) is very late, going back, I think, precisely to the confused Basil of Caesarea. The NT, really, just sits with OT monotheism - just now featuring a raised and exalted Lord (the human Messiah), ruling under God. This point is widely recognized by scholars not desperate to push 4th c. views as the obvious implications of the NT, e.g. http://trinities.org/blog/hans-kung-on-new-testament-theology/ These are, really, pretty obvious points, but they are not welcome in the recent, often intellectually incestuous "high christology" genre of writings.

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    1. "Retreat!"

      I would only be a retreat if I previously said the deity of Christ is obvious in every NT writing. Can you document where I said that?

      "Are you really conceding that?"

      How is it any kind of concession to say the deity of Christ isn't obvious in every NT writing? There are NT writings like 2 John and Philemon that don't get into the person of Christ.

      "So then, a Christian who in good faith looks at the NT and says, 'Gee guys, I know you think this means that Jesus is implying that he's God himself - but I think, instead, that he's just saying that he is God's human Messiah. Those implications you see there - I just don't see them.' - this person, in your view, is *not* denying the obvious?"

      i) You're the one, not me, who recast the issue in terms of what's "obvious". But that's subjective. It's obvious to 9/11 Truthers that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.

      ii) Different NT writings discuss different topics. Some NT writings are silent on divine omniscience and omnipotence, creation of the world, Adam, Satan, eschatological judgment, justification by faith, the virgin birth, miracles of Christ, exorcism, crucifixion, resurrection, baptism, eucharist, &c.

      Some NT writings don't speak to a topic one way or the other. That doesn't mean the NT is unclear. The NT is a collection of documents. The fact that one or more NT writings may not discuss some topic doesn't imply that the same topic isn't discussed elsewhere, in another NT writing (or several).

      The deity of Christ is multiply and unambiguously attested in the NT. The same is true regarding various incidents in the life of Christ, yet many NT writings have nothing to say about those incidents one way or the other. Likewise, not every NT writing talks about Satan, or justification by faith, or the eucharist.

      "So, you're taking it back? Even (you think) 2nd c. mainstream Christians thought that the NT implies clearly that Jesus is God himself?"

      Now you're changing the subject from NT Christology to patristic Christology. Nothing for me to take back since your comparison is equivocal.

      "but most didn't think he was divine in the way that the one true God is divine."

      Maybe not but by the same token they didn't think he was merely human. You got snared in your own trap.

      "doesn't get a dilemma going - it doesn't apparently rule out humanity."

      The orthodox position doesn't rule out humanity. Indeed, the orthodoxy position requires humanity.

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    2. "You seem to not realize, though, that the idea that Jesus is divine *in the exact same way or to the same degree that the one God is divine*, implying that he is the one God himself - this was an outlier in both 2nd and 3rd c."

      Your mind works in funny ways. I never took a position on ante-Nicene theology. That was never my benchmark.

      You're the one who chose to drag that into the discussion, you then impute to me an interpretation of the ante-Nicene fathers even though I never staked my claim on the ante-Nicene fathers.

      I didn't suggest they thought that Jesus is divine in the exact same way as the Father. What I suggested, rather, is that they split the difference. They took a position that's isn't consistently unitarian or Trinitarian.

      "The confused 'Jesus is God' apologist ought to take care not to project that confusion into 2nd and 3rd c. sources - a context where that confusion was relatively rare."

      Can you quote me doing that?

      "But the idea that the NT somehow strikes a happy medium between monotheism and polytheism (a baffling piece of rhetoric, if you think about it)"

      I pointed out that NT writers must avoid formulations that gentile readers with a pagan background would misconstrue polytheistically. That's hardly equivalent to saying the NT strikes a happy medium between monotheism and polytheism.

      "This point is widely recognized by scholars not desperate to push 4th c. views as the obvious implications of the NT"

      I'm not filtering NT Christology through the prism of Nicene categories. Try again.

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    3. "So then, a Christian who in good faith looks at the NT and says, 'Gee guys, I know you think this means that Jesus is implying that he's God himself - but I think, instead, that he's just saying that he is God's human Messiah. Those implications you see there - I just don't see them.' - this person, in your view, is *not* denying the obvious?"

      Ok. What about this?

      "So then, a Christian who in good faith looks at the NT and says, 'Gee guys, I know you think this means that Jesus the one savior - but I think, instead, that he's just saying that he is one of many saviors like Bahá'u'lláh or Buddha. Those implications you see there - I just don't see them.'”

      Yes. This non-Christian person like the unitarian, is denying what the NT teaches unambiguously.

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  2. If a Trinitarianism Christology and the usual Evangelical understanding of inspiration were true then it would have been difficult for the human authors of the New Testament to explain precisely how Jesus is God, and man and yet also not God [i.e. the Father]. Whereas if Humanitarian Unitarianism [HU] were true, the NT writers wouldn't have had such a difficult time to explain that view. Yet, when we look at the NT, it doesn't clearly and unambiguously teach HU. Shouldn't that count against HU if we were hypothetically to say that the evidence between the one extreme of Sabellianism and the other extreme of Humanitarian Unitararianism were perfectly balanced? Isn't it also telling that in terms of popularity on the theological spectrum that neither extreme ever had a wide following? Instead the majority of Christological views has always been someone between those two extremes. Given that the majority of people who have studied the NT down the millennium have rejected both extremes, doesn't that lend credibility to the likelihood that the true Christology is somewhere in between?

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    2. Doesn't this bell curve of popularity militate against the HU claim that the Gospel writers were sufficiently clear in teaching HU when most people have rejected a merely [though admittedly exalted] human Jesus?

      Also, I think there are various reasons why the Gospel writers didn't explicitly state that Jesus was God.

      1. It would be difficult to explain, as I noted above. It would require a balance of Christ's attributes and character that would be difficult to maintain. [Though, I think the balance found in the Gospels fits better with Trinitarianism than Humanitarian Unitarianism]

      2. They were trying to record the sayings, doings and key events of Jesus' life accurately, and without too much theological bias and interpolation.

      3. That would entail preserving to some extent Jesus' vagueness and cryptic allusions to his Divinity. They wouldn't want to put words into Jesus' mouth that violated or went beyond the "very voice of Jesus" (ipsissima vox).

      4. Notice how even with regard to Jesus' Messiahship He was vague about it and didn't proclaim it openly. Rather He let is words and deeds do the speaking. If that's true of His claim for Messiah, how much more had he believed and His claimed to be Divine?

      Having said that, I think Mark, Matthew and John clearly have very high Christologies and teach Jesus is Divine [at least in some sense]. Luke (IMO) by itself doesn't do either, but when combined with Acts [which is his volume II], does also have a high Christology and teaching Jesus' Divinity.

      Remember that Bart Ehrman recently changed his mind on this issue. In times past he denied that all 4 Gospels taught Jesus was divine. NOW, Ehrman does think that all 4 DO teach that Jesus is Divine [in some sense, and differing senses]. Watch a video of Ehrman admitting this HERE. See also Robert Bowman's assessment of Ehrman's views regarding this topic in the video HERE.

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  3. Interesting discussion. It seems the doctrine of the Trinity necessarily comes from the NT in the distinction between substance/nature/essence vs. person / hupostasis. That the Word / Jesus is called Theos by substance seems clear in John 1:1 and John 20:28 and also Philippians 2:5-8; Hebrews 1:3, 6, 8; Colossians 1:15-20, etc. and other classic Deity of Christ passages.

    I was recently also discussing some aspects of these issues with a Unitarian (Jehovah's Witness) at my little blog.

    It was Gregory of Nyssa (see the quote there by Georg Kaplan, a Jehovah's Witness) who wrote something about combining Jewish Monotheism and the best from Greek pagan thought (diversity, persons, hypostasis), but the key in that quote is that he says "because of belief in the Word (logos) and the Spirit" - shows that the source of the doctrine of the Trinity is the NT revelation. IMO, hints at the Trinity are in the opening verses of Genesis 1, God the Father as Creator, the spoken Word - "let there be light", etc. and the Spirit of the Lord hovering over the waters.

    See the discussion and reference to Gregory of Nyssa: (comments there are now closed)

    https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/response-to-georg-kaplan-on-trinity-and-gregory-of-nyssa-jesus-as-theos-ignatius/

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