The dictionary fallacy

Apostate Dale Tuggy attempted a response to my (then) latest post:

http://trinities.org/blog/steve-hays-vs-lexicons-and-deep-thoughts-on-ot-binitarianism/

No, there’s nothing “slanted” about the question. OT monotheism is as clear as can be – the one true God there, the only creator, is YHWH. 

To ask whether the Spirit of God is additional to God is prejudicial because Trinitarians don't think God is one thing while the Spirit is another thing additional to God. Tuggy has already cast the issue in terms that treat a unitarian conception as the basis of comparison, such that anything over and above it must be tacked on to that. 

A pointless exercise, I think, because basic reading comprehension very quickly delivers the monotheism I mentioned above. 

i) Tuggy doesn't like it when I call his bluff. But he's the one who objects to filtering Scripture through catholic/Nicene categories. He constantly labors to shoehorn my position into a catholic/Nicene paradigm, even though I dissent from some planks of Nicene theology. For instance, I share the position of Warfield and Helm (among others) in rejecting eternal generation/procession.

Indeed, Tuggy recently went a step further in suspending the NT from consideration when reading the OT. So I'm just taking his hermeneutical methodology to a logical conclusion. For the sake of argument, let's approach the OT in a vacuum. As if we were reading the text for the first time, starting at Genesis. As if we had no knowledge of historical theology. 

ii) From that standpoint, monotheism is not a given. And, indeed, there are OT scholars who think the OT preserves divergent theologies with traces of polytheism, viz. P. Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation (Baker 2005), 97-102. They think the OT teaches henotheism rather than monotheism. 

Is that my own position? No. But I'm responding to Tuggy on his own grounds. 

This is a pop apologetics junk argument. No, that elohim often has a singular meaning, despite its plural structure, is shown by its use with singular verbs and singular personal pronouns. When it was used to mean “gods” instead of “God,” the accompanying words would be plural. Not confusing, really, any more than is our word “pants.” Thus, there’s not even a semblance of a hint here of “plurality within God.” That’s merely projected onto the texts.

i) Let's see:

Many scholars from various positions in biblical studies argue that the original mythic character of Genesis can still be seen in the "cleansed" text. For example, it is often argued that the plurality of the name of God (elohim) in Genesis 1 suggests an original polytheism that only later evolved into an argument monotheism. Similar claims are made about another key word from the creation account [tehom]. J. Currid, Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament (Zondervan 2013), 35. 

ii) Another example is Gen 6:4, which many scholars think is a residual reflection of pagan tales about gods fathering demigods by sexual intercourse with mortal women, viz. I. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans 2015), 110-12; N. Sarna, Genesis (JPS 1989), 45; B. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge 2009), 90.

Are those my own positions? No. But the point is that you don't have to be a Trinitarian to reject Tuggy's unitarian reading of the OT. Many OT scholars reject Tuggy's interpretation because they think the OT is theologically diverse. 

Most commenters now think that this is the divine council, the elohim (deities) – we would say angels – which attend God.

Yes, but there are problems with that:

i) Are human creatures made in the image of angelic creatures?

ii) OT scholars typically think the "divine council" has its origin in the Canaanite/Ugaritic pantheon. For instance:

It reflects an originally polytheistic account insufficiently sanitized. J. Collins, Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic. literary, and Theological Commentary (P&R 2006), 59. [Collins rejects that option]

This is the Israelite version of the polytheistic assemblies of the pantheon–monotheized and depaganized. N. Sarna, Genesis (JPS 1989), 12. 

iii) Deut 32:8-9 is a Pentateuch prooftext for the divine council. Many scholars think that's a domesticated version of the Canaanite pantheon, in which there's a high god or presiding god above a second tier of lower gods who function as national/patron deities. On that interpretation, Elyon is the high god while Yahweh is one of the lesser, territorial divinities. Cf. J. McConville, Deuteronomy (IVP 2002), 448,54; D. Block, Deuteronomy (Zondervan 2012), 753; The Gods of the Nations: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Theology (Baker 2000), chap. 1. 

Is that my own position? No. I'm just responding to Tuggy on his own grounds. Given the polytheistic background of the divine council interpretation, that's a highly ironic interpretation for a unitarian to champion! 

Nope, not two characters! That’s not how an ancient reader would take Genesis 1:2. He would assume that in some sense God has a body, and then like us, he also has a spirit – the unseen power, the source of life or the inner being. There is no self-to-self interaction here, e.g. conversation or interpersonal cooperation, or other signs to indicate that elohim is one self and his “spirit” or breath is another.

i) If, according to Tuggy, the ruach is the soul to Elohim's body, then the ruach is the seat of divine personality.

ii) And, yes, the combination of v2 and v26 does imply a collaborative audience.  

I don’t think most ancient readers would make a clear distinction between creatures and minor deities. These latter typically derive from other deities, and ultimately from the high God.

Which ignores the context of my statement. Initially, a reader won't draw that distinction. But as he reads further into the OT text, that distinction will become more evident. 

Oy. That silly, Athanasian “on the divine side” rhetoric – a classic weasel phrase. I need to do a whole post on that some time. For now: notice why he adopts this odd phrase here – by talking abstractly about “the divine side,” this leaves it as an open question whether or not this “spirit” is the same self as God, or a self in addition to God. Convenient! But supposedly, he’s arguing that in the OT, one might well think that the spirit of God is a someone in his own right, a self in addition to God.

To be on the divine side is not to be on the mundane side. Not to be a creature. 

Notice the obvious usage that he leaves out in this list – “spirit” as the inner part or aspect of a human person, often standing in for the person himself, so that what, e.g. your spirit feels is just what you feel.

Which, by analogy, makes the Spirit of God entirely divine. That's Tuggy's dilemma. 

What, pray tell, does it mean to say that OT theology is “binitarian”? Serious question. I assume, by analogy with “trinitarian,” that it means that there are two “Persons” in the OT (the Father and the Spirit?) which share an ousia. In my book What is the Trinity? chapter 7, I discuss nine things which “same ousia” might mean. Until our would-be apologist specifies which he means, we don’t even have an intelligible view here, which we might look into the OT to try to find. He’s just got traditional catholic language, and he’s hoping that the OT somehow gets one part way there. But “where” is “there”? I mean, what sort of ousia-sharing does he have in mind? I really don’t know. But then, none of us is in a position to see whether or not this is to be found taught or presupposed or even hinted at in the OT. Past experience has taught me that Steve Hays is proudly and defiantly confused on this topic; he has no one interpretation of the traditional catholic Trinity language, as best as I can tell. 

i) Defending traditional catholic Trinity language was never my aim. I take the position of theologians like Warfield, Frame, Feinberg, and Helm regarding the autotheistic nature of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

ii) I do agree with the Nicene creed that the Son (and Spirit) are consubstantial with the Father. 

iii) I didn't use traditional catholic language. I used David Cline's characterization of "duality in the godhead". Clines is a renown OT scholar, and quite liberal. 

No, it is a proper name. Evidently, our would-be apologist is reasoning backwards here – if God is tripersonal, he ought not have a proper name, which would suggest that he’s a single person. 

I said nothing to indicate that God can't have a proper name because he's tripersonal. I didn't reason backwards from the Trinity to the conclusion that Yahweh is not a proper name. 

But, this is not what the scholars say. He may be assuming here that a proper name can’t have a meaning, but of course, many OT and NT names do have meanings, e.g. Immanuel, Joshua/Jesus.

I made no such assumption. Tuggy has a lively imagination. 

“Lexicons? Who needs ’em?”

Bizarre free-wheeling here. Kids, if you’re going to do apologetics, do you homework first. Don’t just pop off and try to one-up the other guy. It’s no good to insist that God can’t have a proper name, when the reference books say that in the OT he does! That second sentence – is that supposed to be the reason for the first? If so, it is a wild non sequitur. Just because God can’t have a true peer, it doesn’t follow that he can’t have a proper name. Nor does it follow that other beings make be like him in kind, though not full peers – e.g. men, angels.

A lesson for would-be apologists here; don’t pounce on your opponent so fast that you can’t take time to look things up in standard reference sources. Both your misinformation and your lack of self control reflect poorly on the cause you think you’re serving.

i) To begin with, Tuggy commits what William Vallicella dubs "the Dictionary Fallacy: thinking that certain philosophical questions can be answered by consulting dictionaries. 

ii) As far as what scholars say, there's no consensus on "Yahweh". There are OT scholars who think God's answer to Moses is evasive. They think God refuses to provide a name because that gives people control over a deity. 

iii) In general, divine names for the one true Deity are appellatives rather than proper names. 

iv) In addition:

The answer Moses receives is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a name. It is an assertion of authority, a confession of an essential reality, and thus an entirely appropriate response to the question Moses poses. J. Durham, Exodus (Word 1987), 38. 

The answer in v14…set against the pagan context of the question, rejects the very idea of a name for God. He is not like Amun or Ptah; he cannot be assigned a place and identity in the cosmos as one of the gods. In the most ultimate sense, he has no name…To ask his "name" is to miss the point completely, because he is not one of the gods at all…It is not God's name in the way that Seth, Horus, Thoth, or Bastet identify and define individual Egyptian gods…As the angel of YHWH said to Manoah, "Why do you ask my name? It is too wonderful" (Judg 13:18). D. Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus (Kregel 2014), 207-208. 

Simply put, monotheism has no need, possibly no room, for a name–a proper name–for Deity. Proper names are labels by which individual or particular members of a class are differentiated one from another. If Deity is a class with but one member, then the common name or noun for that class is sufficient…Our capitalization of God or Deity owes then to the respect for the concept of singleness of deity, and to an inherited convention for the differentiation of the One and Only God of Scripture from the many gods that (exist(ed) only in the minds of pagans…In monotheism a proper name for Deity is in a sense blasphemous, allowing as it may for the existence of other deities by other names. H. Brichto, The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings (Oxford 1998), 31,33.

It's amusing to see the inverse ratio between Tuggy's confidence and competence. He accuses me of making unscholarly, uninformed claims, yet throughout his reply he exposes his utter ignorance of the relevant literature, while I can easily back up my claims–as in fact I've done in this rejoinder. Tuggy falls into the classic trap of simultaneously overestimating himself and underestimating his critics.