I listened to the recent debate between Dale Tuggy and Michael Brown. I think Brown made a powerful case. Here's his opening statement:
In this post I'm going to focus on Dale's side of the debate. This will be a long post.
In a way I'm surprised that Dale didn't do better. On the one hand, Brown wears many hats. A debater. Bible commentator. Messianic Jewish apologist. Culture warrior. Globe-trotting missionary. President of FIRE. And so on.
By contrast, Dale is a single-issue guy who spends all his leisure time expounding unitarianism. That's his professional specialization. He's been honing his arguments for years. He's debated Bible scholars like Michael Heiser, Larry Hurtado, and Lee Irons on his podcasts. And Dale had the home-court advantage on philosophical theology. So I expected him to turn in a stronger performance. As such, it was striking to see how often he floundered.
I. In addition to his exegetical misadventures, which I'll get to momentarily, I'm struck by Dale's philosophical blunders. Philosophy ought to be his strong suit.
1. Dale consistently fails to distinguish between two different claims:
i) Scripture doesn't say if x is the case
ii) Scripture says that x is not the case
Dale constantly acts as though the silence of Scripture is equivalent to a biblical denial. But that's an obvious fallacy.
Of course, if the Bible never teaches the elements of the Trinity, Incarnation, or deity of Christ, then we'd be unwarranted in believing those things. But Dale's argument often amounts to the inference that a NT writing doesn't teach something in one place, that's cancels out what it teaches in another place.
2. Dale's methodology is circular. He has the same M.O. as a methodological atheist who automatically discounts reported miracles. For Dale, whatever the Bible means, it can't be that! Passages which seem to teach the Incarnation or deity of Christ can't mean what they clearly seem to mean because we already know that the Bible is unitarian! It's just like the methodological atheist who insists that a reported miracle, however well-documented, can't be legit because we already know that we don't live in that kind of world. Both Dale and the methodological atheist dismiss in advance any evidence counter to their position because that can't be right. Their position can't be wrong, so the evidence must be wrong!
3. In addition, it's striking to see humanitarian unitarianism make the very same moves as Catholic Mariology.
i) When Protestants object that Mary, as a mere human being, can't simultaneously process millions of daily prayers in dozens of foreign languages, Catholic apologists assert that God gave Mary superhuman abilities. Unitarians like Dale make the same move about Jesus. Even though he's just human, God has enabled him to know and do superhuman things. Things that according to the OT, only Yahweh is able to know or do.
ii) When Protestants object that it's idolatrous to worship Mary, Catholics say it's not idolatrous because it's a lesser kind of worship. Unitarians like Dale make the same move about Jesus. In effect, they resort to the hairsplitting dulia/hyperdulia/latria distinction.
4. Dale chronically fails to distinguish between an internal critique and an external critique. When mounting an internal critique, you adopt the opposing viewpoint for the sake of argument, then show that it's inconsistent even on its own assumptions.
For instance, Dale quotes unitarian prooftexts which are allegedly inconsistent with the deity of Christ. But he routinely fails to take into account the two-natures of Christ or the communication of attributes. Now Dale doesn't believe in the two-natures of Christ or the communication of attributes, but that's irrelevant. If he's attempting to demonstrate that orthodox Christology is inconsistent with unitarian prooftexts, then it's incumbent on him to show that they are inconsistent within that frame of reference.
For example, Trinitarians admit Jesus qua human doesn't know everything. They distinguish between the omniscient divine nature and the human nature, which is not omniscient.
Likewise, Trinitarians admit that Jesus qua human is mortal. Because Jesus is a composite entity (the divine nature in union with a human soul in union with a human body), you can make statements about the composite that strictly speaking are only true for one component of the composite.
Dale is so impatient with orthodox Christology that he constantly defaults to unitarian assumptions when attempting to show that orthodox Christology is at odds with unitarian prooftexts. That, however, is an external critique. That takes the unitarian benchmark for granted. If, however, his aim is to show that orthodox Christology is inconsistent with the Bible, then he has to demonstrate that it's inconsistent given the orthodox framework, which includes the two natures and the communication of attributes. He has to show that even if you grant the orthodox framework for discussion purposes, it still can't accommodate the unitarian prooftexts.
As a trained philosopher, you'd expect Dale to keep these two strategies distinct. Yet he erratically oscillates back and forth, as if attacking orthodox Christology from a unitarian perspective is tantamount to showing that orthodox Christology is irreconcilable with unitarian prooftexts. Yet it should go without saying that orthodox Christology has inner resources and harmonistic strategies to field those objections.
Dale is just like village atheists (e.g. Hitchens, Dawkins, Coyne) who lack the intellectual patience to evaluate Christianity on its own terms. They have so much contempt for Christianity that they can't bring themselves to assume the Christian position for discussion purposes. They can't take it seriously even for the sake of argument.
5. Likewise, it's muddleheaded for Dale to say the Trinitarian position is inconsistent because the NT distinguishes between the Father and the Son. Far from being inconsistent with Trinitarian theology, that's a necessary presupposition of Trinitarian theology. This is yet another example of Dale defaulting to unitarian assumptions when debating a Trinitarian. But that distinction is only inconsistent on unitarian grounds. Dale lacks the critical detachment to consider the opposing position from the inside out.
6. In addition, these distinctions aren't unique to orthodox Christiology. If say, you're a Cartesian dualist, you say a human being is normally a composite entity consisting in a union of two different substances (material body, immaterial soul). In popular discourse, when not speaking with philosophical precision, we make statements about the individual who's the property-bearer of both sets of properties.
Or to take another example, the same individual can be a bachelor, husband, and widower. These can't be simultaneously true, but they are true statements about the same individual at different stages of life. That's the communication of attributes. The fact that each social role can be ascribed to the same individual doesn't mean a bachelor is a husband. Rather, it means the same individual can be both (at different times).
7. Then there's Dale's chronic semantic fallacy. No matter how often he's been corrected on this point, he keeps repeating it. He acts as though, if the Father is called "God", then only the Father can be God. But even at the level of lexical semantics, that's a fallacious inference. "God" is ambiguous.
When a Trinitarian says the Father is God, he's using "God" as a proper noun. A name for a particular individual. A synonym for the Father.
When a Trinitarian says the Trinity is God, he's using "God" as a common noun. A categorical designation. Belonging to that class or genus. The Deity. "God" in a quantitative sense.
When a Trinitarian says Jesus is God, he's using "God" as an abstract noun. Jesus is divine. Has a divine nature. Has deity. "God" in a qualitative sense. A Trinitarian can say the Father or the Spirit is "God" in that sense as well.
8. Dale's failure to distinguish between different kinds of nouns is also why his inconsistent triads are vitiated by equivocation. He labors to show that orthodox Christian usage is contradictory, yet it can only be contradictory if "God" has the same meaning in each premise of the syllogism.
9. When attacking Trinitarianism, Dale constantly avers that NT never confuses God and Jesus. But that's ambiguous. In Trinitarian theology, the fundamental distinction isn't between "God" and Jesus but between the Father and the Son. Dale's argument would only work if, when the NT uses "God" to refer to the Father, it's using "God" as a common noun–in contrast to what is not the Deity. If God is in a class by himself, and the Father is called "God" in that exclusive sense, then by definition, the Father alone is the one true Deity. But just quoting examples in which the NT uses "God" as a designation for the Father doesn't advance the unitarian claim one inch.
10. One reason Dale was so ineffective against Brown is that Dale's argument is geared for an opponent who uses a catholic paradigm. Likewise, one of Dale's strategies is to translate the opposing position into his own categories. He tries to get the Christian to agree with Dale's jargon. It can be a winning strategy if your opponent let's you frame the terms of the debate.
But Brown isn't the typical Christian apologist. He's a messianic Jew. He doesn't have a seminary degree. His college degrees are from secular institutions. He operate with a Jewish hermeneutic. Thomism, church fathers and church councils aren't his lodestar. As much as possible, Brown prefers to use biblical language and categories.
As a result, Dale never got a foothold with Brown because Brown never agreed to let Dale recast Brown's position in Dale's lingo. Dale couldn't win by making Brown play by Dale's rules, and he always lost when he tried to play by Brown's rules.
This isn't primarily a tactic on Brown's part. Rather, Brown is used to debating rabbis. They operate with a common Jewish hermeneutic. Brown comes into Christianity from a different frame of reference. That's why Dale was stumped when he used his stump speech on Brown.
II. Having discussed Dale's methodological errors, I'd like to shift to his specific arguments.
1. Dale said that if Jesus is God Incarnate, we'd expect him (in the Gospels) to correct the standard Jewish teaching about God.
That, however, begs the question of what was the standard Jewish teaching. For instance, Jewish scholar Alan Segal argued that in 2nd Temple Judaism there was a two-Yahwehs doctrine to account for statements in the OT that seem inconsistent with unitarian theism. A visible Yahweh in contrast to an invisible Yahweh. That was a theologically permissible, pre-Christian Jewish paradigm. It only became heretical (in Rabbinic Judaism) in reaction to Christianity. That's documented and elaborated by Michael Heiser:
On that view, Jesus doesn't have to correct the standard Jewish teaching about God because that already made room for the Trinity and the Incarnation. That takes the 2nd Temple trajectory to a logical denouement.
Dale countered by saying it's easy for omnipotent God to appear in two (or more places) at once. But there are problems with that response:
i) The question at issue isn't whether Dale agrees with the two-Yahwehs doctrine. The question at issue isn't whether Dale can offer an alternative explanation for the same textual phenomena.
Rather, the question at issue, as Dale himself framed the issue, is "the standard Jewish teaching about God" at the time of Jesus. Their viewpoint, their interpretation, is the standard of comparison–not his. Even if he thinks the 2nd Temple rabbis who developed a two-Yahwehs doctrine were mistaken, that's irrelevant since the point at issue is the nature of the Jewish hermeneutic at the time of Jesus. Was the 1C Jewish hermeneutic open to a divine messiah?
ii) In addition, to say it's easy for omnipotent God to appear in two (or more places) at once fails to address examples of Yahweh taking about a second person as if he's talking about himself. Where the divine speaker refers to a second person, yet in context, the referent is divine. Two divine referents standing in contrast to each other.
iii) On a related note is the phenomenon of illeism in Scripture:
2. Dale said that if Jesus claimed to be God (in the Gospels), we'd expect that to be controversial. But for his enemies, it was controversial. In all four Gospels he's accused of blasphemy. But it's hard to see how he could be a blasphemer on unitarian hermeneutics. Even if, for argument's sake, we think all 1C Jews were unitarians, it's not blasphemous for a man to claim to be the Davidic Messiah or God's son in the figurative, adoptive sense of king David.
3. Dale said that in NT usage, "God" almost always refers to the Father, but never to the Trinity. Yet if the Trinity is true, we'd expect NT writers to spread that designation around often calling Son or Spirit "God".
i) The fact that "God" is a conventional designation for the Father make it all the more arresting when Jesus is called "God". The rarity of that usage strengthens rather than weakens the case for the deity of Christ because it's so conspicuous given the expected usage. That really makes it stick out. If "God" as Father is the default basis of comparison, then it grabs our attention when NT writers apply that designation to Jesus because that breaks with convention. It's the standard background usage that makes the foreground stand out.
ii) The expectation is just the opposite. If the Trinity is true, then it would be confusing to routinely use the same designation for Father, Son, and Spirit. It's necessary to have differential designations. That's a basic function of names: to distinguish between different individuals.
4. Dale said "Lord" is ambiguous. But that's a strawman.
i) To begin with, Kurios is the standard translation for Yahweh in the LXX. When, in turn, that's used in another religious context, when that title is applied to Jesus in the NT, it carries the presumption of a divine title. The Greek equivalent of Yahweh. The onus lies on the unitarian to prove otherwise.
ii) But the Trinitarian argument doesn't rest on that alone. In addition, the NT often uses "Lord" synonymously with "Yahweh" as a name or title for Jesus–where the context alludes to OT passages regarding Yahweh. That Lord!
5. Dale said Jesus using "ego eimi" doesn't entail that he's claiming to be Yahweh. But that's another strawman. The Trinitarian argument is not that "ego eimi," considered in isolation, is Yahwistic, but that in Pentateuchal and Isaian usage (via the LXX), ego eimi is an idiomatic synonym for Yahweh, and there are passages in the Gospels where, contextually, Christ's usage alludes to those paradigmatic OT texts. For instance:
6. Dale said theos can be used in a lesser sense, in application to humans (Jn 10:32/Ps 82; Heb 1:8-9/Ps 45). But that's yet another strawman.
i) The Trinitarian argument is not that theos necessarily denotes the one true God, but that, contextually, it's used that way in reference to Jesus.
ii) In response to an audience member who appealed to the third-person plural in Gen 1 to prooftext the Trinity, Dale citied Michael Heiser on the divine council. But Heiser doesn't think the "gods" in Ps 82 are human beings.
iii) As Brown pointed out, if you take Ps 45 to be a messianic psalm, then there's no reason to assume that refers to a human king. Dale appeal to OT scholars, but that's self-defeating because many OT scholars don't think that passage is messianic. Yet Dale does think it's messianic.
That's a problem with Dale's "fulfillment fallacy". Is the original referent about someone other than the coming messiah?
iv) Incidentally, David Clines thinks the third-person plural in Gen 1 has God addressing the Spirit of God. For Clines, that text illustrates "duality in the Godhead". D. Clines, "The Image of God in Man," TynBul 19 (1968), 68-69.
7. BTW, Dale routinely acts like you have to be a Trinitarian to think the NT teaches the Incarnation and deity of Christ. But that's demonstrably false. Traditionally, Muslim scholars as well as rabbis interpret the NT the same way as Trinitarians. Likewise, Bart Ehrman thinks the Gospel of John teaches the deity of Christ.
The Trinitarian reading of the NT is not a partisan, sectarian interpretation, but one that ranges across the theological spectrum, from liberal to conservative, Christian to non-Christian. The only difference is that some scholars think the NT codifies a number of disparate Christologies–some high and some low.
8. Dale thinks Mk 13:32 is incompatible with the deity of Christ.
i) But that's not incompatible with orthodox Christology, given the two-natures and the communication of attributes. Although Dale rejects that, he fails to demonstrate that the opposing position is inconsistent. It's only inconsistent on unitarian assumptions, but that's the very issue in dispute!
Dale accuses Brown of the Kenotic heresy, but that's confused. It's not Kenotic to say that Jesus qua human wasn't omniscient.
ii) Ironically, Dale's appeal is at variance with his own theology. He's an open theist. According to open theism, God doesn't know the future. Even on his own grounds, Jesus could be God but not know when the world will end.
9. Apropos (8), Dale alleges that it's inconsistent to say Jesus died or Jesus doesn't know everything (Mt 24:26; Mk 13:32) if Jesus is God. But Dale commits the composition fallacy. Jesus is a composite being: the divine Son in union with a human soul and body. And it's consistent to ascribe things to a composite object or entity that aren't true for the composite as a whole. For instance, glass has different properties than metal. But it's not contradictory to ascribe different or divergent properties to an automobile. Since an automobile is composed of metal, glass (plastic, oil, gasoline, rubber), you're not saying the glassy properties are identical to the metallic or rubbery properties. Since the car has all these different properties, you're attributing different properties to the same car. The car is their common property-bearer. But that's different from saying glass is metal. So Dale's objection is confused.
By the same token, it's not contradictory to say that Jesus is ignorant with respect to his humanity. It's not contradictory to Jesus is mortal with respect to his humanity. You can, without contradiction, ascribe something to the body that's inapplicable to the soul. Here's a critique of Dale's argument by a Christian philosopher:
10. Dale thinks the subordination of Jesus to the Father in the Gospels is incompatible with the deity of Christ. But that's a fallacious inference.
i) First of all, that fails to distinguish between the Son qua Son and the Son qua Incarnate.
ii) In addition, biblical messianism trades on a royal succession motif. So long as he's the crown prince, a royal son is subordinate to his royal father. But when the prince assumes the throne as the successor or coregent, he is equal to the old king. For instance:
11. Dale imagines that Col 1:15-17 is about the new creation rather than the original creation. So it doesn't present Christ as the Creator God. But his interpretation is out of context:
i) On that interpretation, the "new creation" would be a metaphor for the spiritual renewal of sinners. But a basic problem with that interpretation is that Paul's is referring in part to fallen angels. Invisible principalities and powers (v16, cf. 2:10,15). However, Jesus is not the redeemer of fallen angels. They will not be restored.
ii) In addition, Dale must explain away Col 2:9.
12. Tuggy appeals to 1 Cor 11:3 (cf. 15:27-28). But as Gregory Beale documents, that refers to the Son in his economic role as the Last Adam. Cf. G. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology (Baker 2011), 261-62.
13. Tuggy appeals to Jn 17:3. A couple of points:
i) Dale appeals to the classic monotheistic passages of Scripture to prove unitarianism. But here we need to ask, when the Bible says there's only one true God, what's the point of contrast? Compared to what?
In context, the point of contrast is pagan polytheism. Pagan gods were understood to be physical, humanoid beings. Finite in knowledge, finite in power, finite in space, finite in time. They came into being. They begat other gods through sexual reproduction. They were territorial gods, with particular jurisdictions (e.g. god of the seas). They could be destroyed.
When the Bible asserts monotheism, it means gods like that don't exist. That's the frame of reference.
In biblical monotheism, the Trinity is not the point of contrast. The Incarnation is not the point of contrast.
There is only one God to the exclusion of pagan gods. But that doesn't rule out the Trinity since the Father, Son, and Spirit aren't analogous to pagan gods.
ii) Here's what I think it Jn 17:3 means:
14. Michael Brown quoted a reductio ad absurdum of unitarianism. See here:
Tuggy responded by saying there are text-critical issues with Jude 4. He's correct, yet that's beside the point since the reductio didn't rely on the Textus Receptus but modern translations based on the eclectic text.
15. Tuggy says that if the deity of Christ in the background assumption in Heb 1, the author wouldn't waste time arguing that Jesus is superior to the angels. Moreover God wouldn't have to tell the angels to worship him if he is deity.
i) Although the deity of Christ is a background assumption for the author of Hebrews, it doesn't follow that it's a background assumption for the reader. The author is making a case for the deity of Christ, and one way is by arguing that Jesus is higher than the angels. Why should the reader believe Jesus is God Incarnate? The author marshals a number of reasons. The original audience for Hebrews may have suffered from a deficient Christology, which is why the author is going over that ground.
ii) Commanding the heavenly angels to worship Jesus is rhetorical and anthropomorphic. It's not that the heavenly angels literally need God to exhort them to worship Jesus, as if they are in the dark or unenthusiastic. Rather, that's a rhetorical technique to illustrate that even the highest creatures worship Jesus.
iii) The debate scratched the surface of the Christology in Hebrews. For an exposition of the high Christology in Hebrews, see Bauckham's analysis:
16. Responding to Rev 21:6,13, where the same titles are applied to the Father and the Son, Tuggy says that in reference to the Son, it denotes the uniqueness of Jesus as the new Adam and the firstborn from the dead.
i) But that interpretation disregards the background for the titles. These go back to statements in Isa 40-48 where Yahweh is talking about what makes Yahweh unique, what makes Yahweh the one true God. By definition, that can't be extended to a creature, because it erases the line of demarcation between Yahweh and creation, which was the point of the titles in the first place. And placing them back-to-back, first in reference to the Father and then the Son invites and demands parallel significance.
ii) And this exposes a fault-line in unitarian hermeneutics. Scripture mentions certain attributes, actions, and prerogatives that are unique to Yahweh. These are what differentiate Yahweh from false gods.
If, however, there's a wholesale transference from what the OT says about Yahweh to what the NT says about Jesus, then there's nothing left to distinguish Yahweh from Jesus. If, according to Dale, Jesus is just a creature, just a man, yet all the classic OT criteria which single out Yahweh as the one true God are reapplied to Jesus, then a creature becomes systematically interchangeable with God. But that completely sabotages the biblical monotheism that unitarians like Dale lay claim to. If Jesus is merely God's human deputy, he exhausts everything the Bible says sets Yahweh apart from creatures or false gods!
iii) Dale's position generates a dilemma. He thinks Jesus is God's human deputy. But in effect he still has to deify Jesus to account for what Jesus is able to do, like reading hearts and minds. How can a mere human process millions of prayers every day in hundreds of different languages? So Dale has to make a merely human Son superhuman–with divine abilities.
17. Dale appealed to Mk 10:18, but that ricochets on the unitarian:
18. Tuggy says all four gospels feature Jesus as a mere man. There are many problems with that assertion. Consider Synoptic Christology.
i) As I noticed on another occasion, the original audience for the Gospels was comprised of basically two kinds of readers: Jews and Gentiles. The ancient world had an honor code about hospitality to strangers. The basis for this honor code was cautionary tales. You should be nice to strangers because you never know who you might be dealing with. You never know when the Yahweh or the Olympians might pay a visit in disguise.
There are tales about that in Greco-Roman mythology (e.g. Acts 14:11). In addition, this has a counterpart in the OT. A "man" might turn out to be an angel, while an angel might turn out to be Yahweh!
Sometimes the Angel of the Lord has that deliberately enigmatic quality, to throw people off-guard. How people act when they don't know who they're dealing with exposes their true character.
There are OT stories in which God appears to people incognito. They don't initially know who he is. The reader may know, because the narrator tips off the reader, but a character in the story must discover the true identity of the stranger in their midst.
I think there are parallels between this and the Synoptic Jesus. At times he seems to be deceptively human, as if that's all there is to him, but at other times, he says and does thinks that make the hair of spectators stand on end. There's that sudden, hair-raising recognition you get in OT theophanies as well as Greco-Roman myths about divine spies slumming as humans to test what humans are really like when they don't know the immortals are watching them. Indeed, when unbeknownst to them, they're speaking to Zeus or Yahweh face-to-face. You had to be on the alert lest you dis a deity!
The Synoptic Jesus is open-textured in that regard. There's more to him than meets the eye, and that can manifest itself in a flash. The Synoptic Gospels are peppered with those "uh-oh" moments where the God-incognito motif rises to the surface. The mysterium tremendum. Both Jewish and Gentile readers would be very sensitive to that motif.
ii) Now I'm going to quote some passages from a recently book review by Richard Bauckham. This is just a sample of his argument:
From the perspective of a divine identity Christology focused on the enthronement of Jesus on the cosmic throne of God, allusions to Ps 110:1 are the most obvious indications of this sort. In all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus, though not yet exalted to God's throne, predicts, at a key revelatory climax, in his answer to the high priest, that he is to sit at God's right hand (Mark 14:62; Luke 22:69; Matt 26:64). Interpretation of Jesus's answer to the high priest tends to focus on the allusion to Dan 7:13 (clear in Mark and Matthew but reduced merely to the phrase "the Son of man" in Luke) at the expense of the clear allusion to Ps 110:1. In my view, it is the latter that is crucial to understanding the answer as a claim to participation in the unique identity of God, and it was probably through this combination of allusions that the human figure of Dan 7 could be similarly understood, so that the whole declaration could be considered by the high priest "blasphemy." In all three Synoptic Gospels, this allusion to Ps 110:1 has been preceded by an enigmatic discussion of the text (Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:4144־; Matt 22:41-45) that leaves readers with a question waiting for an answer until the answer is given in Jesus's finally open declaration of his identity to the high priest. None of the Gospels, of course, depict the heavenly enthronement of Jesus (in the NT it is depicted only in the form of symbolic vision in Rev 5), but the final words of Jesus in Matthew refer to it in a way that makes its significance as full participation in God's unique cosmic sovereignty explicit (Matt 28:20: "all authority in heaven and on earth"). Jesus's closing words in Luke make a somewhat less obvious reference to Jesus's exaltation to the heavenly throne: "I am sending upon you what my Father promised" (24:49). Readers of Acts know that the coming of the divine Spirit, bestowed by Jesus himself, is the consequence and the evidence of the enthronement to which Ps 110:1 refers (Acts 2:33-35).In particular, Matt 14:33 points clearly to Jesus's divine identity, because (like 28:9,17) it is a response to a theophany: following the apparition of Jesus walking on the sea, the disciples "worshiped him, saying, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'"Matthew's way of expressing the unique cosmic sovereignty—"all authority in heaven and on earth"—deserves a little more scrutiny. It is the climactic example of Matthew's frequent and significant use of the twofold division of the cosmos into "heaven" and "earth."36 It is clear that, for Matthew, these are importantly distinct realms (see, e.g., 6:10,19-20; 23:9). Jonathan Pennington argues that in 28:18 "in heaven and on earth" is not only a comprehensive expression for the whole cosmos but also an antithetical usage that contrasts Jesus's authority during his earthly life with his more comprehensive authority at his exaltation. Hitherto, he has had authority only on earth (9:6); now he has authority also in heaven.37 Unlike Adam, whose authority was explicitly limited to the earthly member of the pair "heaven and earth" (Gen 1:1, 26-28), the exalted Jesus has authority also in heaven. Unlike the Davidic Messiah, to whom God gives "the ends of the earth" (Ps 2:8), the exalted Jesus has authority also in heaven. This explicit extension of Jesus's authority to the realm that belongs to God and not to humans (Ps 115:16) invalidates Kirk's assimilation of Jesus's cosmic sovereignty to the rule of Adam or David over "the world" (e.g., pp. 258, 571). For first-century Jews such as Matthew, distinguishing "heaven" and "earth" was a far from quibbling issue (see, e.g., Ps 148:1-2,11,13; Isa 55:9; 2 Macc 15:3-5; 1 En. 12:4). Hence the importance I attach to the fact Kirk ignores: that in biblical and Jewish literature before the NT no human being ever sits on God's own heavenly throne....we may usefully return to Matt 14:22-33. To some ex־ tent this miracle resembles the stilling of the storm (8:23-27): in both, the disciples encounter stormy conditions at sea and Jesus rescues them. But whereas, in the former, the emphasis is on Jesus's authoritative "rebuke" to the winds and the sea (evoking God's action in Ps 89:9; 107:29),54 in the latter the emphasis is on Jesus's saving presence. He does not address the waves and the sea, only the disciples. He comes to them over the water, saves Peter by reaching out and catching him, and the storm subsides when he gets into the boat. The walking on the sea (14:25) evokes Job 9:8 LXX ("who alone ... walks on the sea as on dry ground"),55 but the theophanic words of Jesus to the disciples (Matt 14:27) strongly suggest God's saving presence with his people. Jesus's words, "Take heart; it is I; do not be afraid" are equivalent to the biblical God's "Do not fear, for I am with you" (Gen 26:24; Isa 41:10; 43:5), creating a link with Jesus's own "I am with you" (28:20). The two occasions on which the male disciples worship Jesus (14:33; 28:17) are both theophanies that manifest Jesus's identity both as participating in unique divine prerogatives and as being God's saving presence with his people. Once again, it becomes clear that for Matthew προσκυνέω refers to the worship exclusively due to God and given to Jesus because his acts and words include him in the unique divine identity.What Kirk fails to explain adequately, however, is the connection between "God with us" and "Behold, I am with you" (ιδού εγώ μεθ’ ύμών είμι: note the emphatic εγώ) in Jesus's very last statement in the Gospel (28:20). The name given in 1:23 is a promise of the presence of Jesus "with you" from his exaltation onward,49 a presence that Jesus himself also has predicted in 18:20 (είμι εν μέσω αύτών).The most obvious scriptural allusion in 28:20 is to Gen 28:15, which has not only the precise verbal echo ("Behold, I am with you"), but also several other points of correspondence with Matt 28:17-20.50 But, in any case, "I am with you" appears many times in the OT as an assurance made by God to his people (both individuals and the people as a whole).51 The link between "God with us" (1:23) and "I am with you," along with the OT background, can leave no doubt that in 28:20 Jesus speaks as God. Notably, Jesus does not here act as God's agent, nor does he merely manifest God (as, for example, Kirk argues Adam does, being in his image). Jesus himself is God's presence with his disciples in all places until the end of the age. There is no precedent in biblical or Jewish literature for such a portrayal of a human person. Moses says, "the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Israel" (Deut 20:1). Acting as God's agent, he can be said to have brought Israel out of Egypt (e.g., Exod 32:7), but he does not say "I am with you," referring to God's presence with the people, equating his "I" with God's. Exod 34:12-16 is instructive.I cannot see Adam Christology in the Synoptic Gospels outside Luke 3-4. I am not at all convinced that the Son of Man in the Gospels (whatever might be the case in Dan 7, though I doubt it) is a new Adam. Perhaps more importantly, I think there is a fundamental and fatal flaw in the attempt to make Adam's dominion (really, of course, in Gen 1 the dominion of humanity, male and female) the basis for the rule of idealized Davidic kings and the Danielic Son of Man and thereby to link it to Jesus and his role in the kingdom of God. Adam was given dominion over other living creatures, not over other humans, and since Adam is representative of all humans (in Gen 1:26-28 the dominion is given to humans as such), it cannot take the form of rule by one human or some humans over others. A form of dominion given in principle to all humans cannot be the basis for the rule of humans over humans. I see no indication in Gen 1-11, which is so concerned with origins, that human kingship has a basis in Adam's dominion. The rule of the Messiah, on the other hand, though occasionally associated with a restoration of harmony between humans and animals, is centrally a matter of rule over humans. So, of course, is the kingdom of God. R. Bauckham, “Is “High Human Christology” Sufficient? A Critical Response to J. R. Daniel Kirk’s A Man Attested by God.” Bulletin for Biblical Research 27 (2017) 503-525.
WOW! That was a MASTERFUL critique of Dale's performance at the debate. This blogpost needs to have wide circulation!
ReplyDelete//Things that according to the OT, only Yahweh is able to know or do. //
//iii) Dale's position generates a dilemma. He thinks Jesus is God's human deputy. But in effect he still has to deify Jesus to account for what Jesus is able to do, like reading hearts and minds. How can a mere human process millions of prayers every day in hundreds of different languages? So Dale has to make a merely human Son superhuman–with divine abilities. //
For example 1 Kings 8:39 which says, "then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind),"
Or Jer. 17:10 which the New Testament has Jesus alluding to and applying it TO HIMSELF!
"I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds."- Jer. 17:10
"and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works."- Rev. 2:23 [ JESUS IS SPEAKING!]
No book in the New Testament has more allusions to the Hebrew Bible than the book of Revelation. Given that fact, it seems to me that there's no way to honestly interpret Jesus' statement in Rev. 2:23 which alludes to Jer. 17:10 as anything other than a claim to full Deity. He makes the statement in order it that "all the churches will KNOW that ***I*** am he who searches mind and heart..." He's clearly claiming to be YHVH. Since YHVH says in Jer. 17:10 that HE is the one who does so, and that HE is the one who can therefore render mete recompense. Also compare Jesus' statement in Rev. 22:12 with many OT passages like Ps. 62:12. And notice too that the very next verse is Rev. 22:13 where Jesus claims to be "the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." THAT'S the context of Rev. 22:13, not Dale's great basketball player analogy. Given the high Christology throughout the book of Revelation which equates Jesus with YHVH, it seems to me that the only way Unitarians can deny Jesus' full Deity is to reject the book of Revelation as canonical.
Could God grant creatures the ability to know the thoughts of fellow creatures? Sure. I suspect that God does so on occasion with regard to angels and their interactions with humans. Nevertheless, the essential and natural prerogative to be able to do so is reserved for YHVH alone in Scripture. Yet, we have Jesus ascribing that prerogative to Himself in Revelation. As well as the divine prerogative to reward with due remuneration or retribution. What else can be concluded other than that the Jesus is claiming ABSOLUTE Deity to Himself in that book.
CONTINUED BELOW
// ii) When Protestants object that it's idolatrous to worship Mary, Catholics say it's not idolatrous because it's a lesser kind of worship. Unitarians like Dale make the same move about Jesus. In effect, they resort to the hairsplitting dulia/hyperdulia/latria distinction. //
DeleteYet in Phil. 2:11 the apostle Paul quotes Isaiah 45:23 and applies it to Jesus. When Isaiah 45:23 is arguably the most monotheistic verse of the most monotheistic chapter in the entire Hebrew Bible!!! The Jewish apostle Paul could not have done this without thinking Jesus was full Deity. Otherwise, it would have been a clear violation of OT monotheism by endorsing idolatrous worship. Since, the "bowing" down mentioned is that of true and full religious worship toward the Deity. Compare the idolatry of "bowing the knee" to Baal in Rom. 11:4. Unitarians are fond of saying that this worship of Jesus the creature is "to the glory of God the Father", as if that exonerates it from the charge of idolatry. But that misses the point of Paul. Paul is saying we are to worship Jesus and glorify Him AS you would YHVH. Why? Because Jesus is YHVH (along with the Father [and the Spirit, cf. 2 Cor. 3:17]). Jesus is not a conduit for ultimately worshipping the Father. It's not like the glory and worship to Jesus is passing through Him like water through a garden hose and ultimately to the car you intend on washing. No, Paul is affirming ultimate worship is due to both the Son and the Father. Or in the words of Jesus, we're to honor the Son even as we honor the Father (John 5:23). Remember, Paul is saying "every tongue should CONFESS that Jesus Christ IS Kurios/YHVH" with the backdrop of Isa. 45:23 which he's quoting.
//Far from being inconsistent with Trinitarian theology, that's a necessary preposition of Trinitarian theology.//
I'm guessing Steve meant to type "presupposition", rather than "preposition".
//i) The fact that "God" is a conventional designation for the Father make it all the more arresting when Jesus is called "God". The rarity of that usage strengthens rather than weakens the case for the deity of Christ because it's so conspicuous given the expected usage. That really makes it stick out. If "God" as Father is the default basis of comparison, then it grabs our attention when NT writers apply that designation to Jesus because that breaks with convention. It's the standard background usage that makes the foreground stand out. //
WHAT A POWERFUL OBSERVATION!!!! Moreover, if Unitarianism were true, I would have expected New Testament usage would be reversed. That it would refer to Jesus repeatedly as "God" and only reserving to the Father the term "Lord" given the translation of tetragrammaton into the LXX as kurios. Since, context would ALWAYS make it clear whether kurios is being applied to full Deity or to lesser creatures like humans or angels. Yet, the NT use of kurios for the Son allows for an ambiguity that would be disconcerting for Unitarians, but fits perfectly well given Trinitarianism. Since for Trinitarians the use of kurios in reference to Son can highlight either His human messianic lordship, and/or His Yahwistic Divinity. See the link below to my blogpost: Identifying Jesus with Yahweh/Jehovah
CONT.
// 4. Dale said "Lord" is ambiguous. But that's a strawman.
Deletei) To begin with, Kurios is the standard translation for Yahweh in the LXX. When, in turn, that's used in another religious context, when that title is applied to Jesus in the NT, it carries the presumption of a divine title. The Greek equivalent of Yahweh. The onus lies on the unitarian to prove otherwise.
ii) But the Trinitarian argument doesn't rest on that alone. In addition, the NT often uses "Lord" synonymously with "Yahweh" as a name or title for Jesus–where the context alludes to OT passages regarding Yahweh. That Lord!//
I've collected many such New Testament passages in my blogpost titled: Identifying Jesus with Yahweh/Jehovah
//Likewise, Bart Ehrman thinks the Gospel of John teaches the deity of Christ. //
//18. Tuggy says all four gospels feature Jesus as a mere man. There are many problems with that assertion. Consider Synoptic Christology. //
As a matter of fact, Bart Ehrman changed is mind on this issue. He once thought that of the canonical Gospels only GJohn taught Jesus was divine. Now Ehrman believes that ALL FOUR Gospels have the authors teach that Jesus is "divine" in some (differing) senses. I believe he's admitted that in his book How Jesus Became God. He has also been caught on video saying it as well. For example HERE: https://youtu.be/K5v4Se83Sr0?t=18m48s
It must also be noted that part of the reason that Jesus doesn't right out and say He's YHVH during the majority of His ministry is that He was also being crpytic of His Messianic identity and claims. He went about first proving Himself to be the Messiah by His works and teachings, and then only later to more publicly and officially announce His Messiahship and Divinity later on at the right time during His last week prior to His crucifixion. When the Messiah was to be fully revealed according to the prophecy in Daniel 9. Prior to His triumphal entry Jesus admitted or (more modestly) alluded to His Messiahship and/or Divinity infrequently (and usually, but not always) in intimate settings. Though, Jesus did sometimes publicly hint at His divinity in ambiguous ways that wouldn't get Him stoned and killed before the appointed time of His crucifixion [e.g. John 8:58]. The point being that if Jesus kept cryptic about His Messianic claims for most of His ministry, then it would be all the more necessary and natural for Him to do so regarding His claims of Divinity. Jesus would never have had a 3 year ministry (or however long it was) if He immediately claimed to be God. He'd be stoned on the spot. Rather He often made pregnant statements like "something greater than the Temple is here".
CONT.
// Tuggy responded by saying there are text-critical issues with Jude 4. He's correct, yet that's beside the point since the reductio didn't rely on the Textus Receptus but modern translations based on the eclectic text. //
DeleteI think a similar reductio could be applied to 1 Cor. 8:5-6. If Jesus is the "One Lord", then the Father cannot be the "One Lord". But it'll be said by Unitarians that in that passage the Father is called the "One God". However if Jesus can be called "One Lord" without denying the Father's One Lordship, then the Father being called "One God" shouldn't deny the possibility that Jesus can also be called the "One God". Especially for two reasons. 1. This passages has been shown by scholars to have Paul not only allude to the Shema, but to his applying the Shema to both the Father and Son. Distinguishing the Father and Son by the titles "God" and "Lord". And as Steve has pointed out, "Kurios is the standard translation for Yahweh in the LXX." Also, It's been noted that God is referenced in the Shema THREE TIMES!!!
Shema Yisra’el, YeHoVaH [1st mention] Eloheinu [2nd mention], YeHoVaH [3rd mention] Echad.
But secondly, 2. In verse 5 Paul mentions pagan "gods" and "lords" in a way that's synonymous. Paul doesn't imply (nor did generally pagans believe) that without qualification "gods" normally were higher in rank and ontology than "lords". Rather, they were two terms that were interchangeably applied to various deities. So, if the "gods" and "lords" in verse 5 aren't necessarily ranked, then neither would be the Godship of the Father and the Lordship of the Son as Unitarianism would require.
//But that completely sabotages the biblical monotheism that unitarians like Dale lay claim to.//
Dale says in his opening statement, "The New Testament is just as monotheistic as the Old Testament".
What I find disingenous about Dale's claim to hold to Biblical monotheism is that he rejects the OT standards of monotheism and idolatry. The OT's monotheism requires religious worship to be reserved and directed to YHVH alone. Moreover in his writings and videos he specifically admits that his view that Jesus—as a mere creature [human at that!!!]—can be worshipped is coupled with his belief that the Old Testament command not to religiously worship anyone else other than YHVH has been abrogated, or at least set aside or not applicable to Jesus. So, contrary to his claim, Dale's monotheism isn't Biblical monotheism. Either that of the OT or NT. In fact, Dale's Humanitarian Unitarianism qualifies as unequivocal idolatry. It's not even the lowered worship of a demigod, but of a human worshipped above that of the highest angels. There's not one whiff of an Old Testament precedent for that.
I could say more regarding Dale's statements and arguments in the debate, but because he has not said anything that's new, I'd rather just point to my collection of links to blogs comments and/or full blogs where I've interacted with Dale. Some of the interactions were in passing, but some where very involved and extended discussions. Some lasting for days..
Here's the LINK:
https://trinitynotes.blogspot.com/2016/03/interactions-with-dale-tuggy.html
// ii) In addition, to say it's easy for omnipotent God to appear in two (or more places) at once fails to address examples of Yahweh taking about a second person as if he's talking about himself. Where the divine speaker refers to a second person, yet in context, the referent is divine. Two divine referents standing in contrast to each other. //
DeleteI've collected some of those instances in my blogpost:
Old Testament Passages Implying Plurality in God
https://trinitynotes.blogspot.com/2014/08/old-testament-passages-implying.html
Steve Hays who wrote this blogpost has often interacted with Dale Tuggy. Just do a search on Triablogue. Unfortunately, many (but not all) can be found by clicking this blogpost's label named "Dale Tuggy".
ReplyDeletePlease answer this question for me. Based on I.7. you say that 'God' can be used in three senses: as a proper name, a synonym for Father; as a common noun, denoting a class or category; or as an abstract noun, denoting a quality i.e. divinity. So in your opinion, which of these senses does the word 'God' have in John 17:3 and why?
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't really fit the threefold distinction because it's not a bare use of "God", but "God" with two additional descriptors: "only" and "true".
DeleteAs I argue in a separate post, I think that's equivalent to Yahweh.
Of course, "true" is also used in reference to Jesus. In addition, "only God" is used in reference to Jesus in Jn 1:18. Combine that and you have the same status for Jesus.
So Jn 17:3 is a way of saying the Father is Yahweh, and equivalent statements are made about Jesus in John's Gospel and 1 John.
Are you suggesting that monos and monogenes are synonyms? And I am sure you know of the textual problems with John 1:18 which render it uncertain. In light of Jn. 3:16,18 and 1 Jn.4:9 it seems reasonable that 'only begotten son' is the real reading.
DeleteSo you are telling me that because Jesus is somewhere called 'true' and because a variant reading has 'only God' of Jesus, all we need do is combine these together and presto Jesus has the same status as the Father. Wow!
If Jn 17:3 is saying that the Father is Yahweh, it is saying that he alone is Yahweh. So where exactly are the equivalent statements regarding Jesus?
No, it wouldn't be saying the Father alone is Yahweh. Rather, the three-word phrase would be a synonym for Yahweh.
DeleteThere are two possible ways to construe "the only true God".
i) One is to view it as an idiom for Yahweh. In the OT, Yahweh is the only true God. So this is an alternative designation for Yahweh.
ii) Another way is to view each word in the three-word phrase as having a separate meaning, so that the meaning of the phrase is a combination of each semantic verbal unit.
"one"
"true"
"God"
On that view, the same Gospel says Jesus is the one true God if you simply combine Jn 1:18 with Jn 14:6.
I disagree with you on the original text. But I should probably do a separate post on Jn 17:3, as a followup to my prior post on Jn 17:3.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteREV commentary for John 1:18: https://www.revisedenglishversion.com/John/chapter1/18
DeleteMoreover, did not Jesus not ask The Father to bring Him back to the glory they both shared before the world began. A desperate unitarian will want to argue that Jesus is really talking about his existence in God's knowledge. I guess I can also claim to share glory with God before the world began - afterall I also existed in the foreknowledge of God. For instance, a son could say, "Dad, I wouldn't forget the day you get married to my mom. It is a memorable one." The puzzled father replied, "But you were not born until three years after the wedding" The Son smiled, "My granny who couldn't wait to carry her grandchild was thinking about me on your wedding day! She was thinking of you having a male as your first child. I have always been existing since then!" If we start start using the unitarian method, then no one is existing before the other unless we want to say that God was still acquiring the knowledge of our existence over time.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.revisedenglishversion.com/John/chapter17/5
DeleteHi Steve. A lot of think about there, thanks. In the spirit of Troy's comments, can you please clarify which of those three senses is 'God' used in the sentence 'God is a Trinity'?
ReplyDeleteProper name which you say is a synonym for 'the Father', common noun or abstract noun?
Thanks
Common noun.
DeleteWould God as a common noun i.e. denoting a class of being, apply to Jesus or only to the Father?
DeleteNeither. "God" as a common noun applies to the Trinity, and "God" as a proper noun (usually) applies to the Father, while "God" as an abstract noun is applicable to the Father, Son, and Spirit alike.
DeleteSo in 1 Cor. 8:6 "yet for us there is one God, the Father" how is God being used in your opinion?
DeleteThat has it's background in the Shema, where the Deity goes by two designations: Elohim and Yahweh. The Greek counterparts are theos and kurios. Paul splits the Shema, assigning the Elohim designation to the Father and the Yahweh designation to the Son, according to the Greek synonyms.
DeleteThat really didn't answer my question. Which of your three ways of understanding the word 'God' applies to 1 Cor. 8:6?
Delete"God" has a different function in that text. The meaning is context-dependent.
Deletethanks Steve. 'God is a Trinity' with 'God' as a common noun does not seem to be grammatically correct. After all, to say that 'God is a Trinity' is not a predication of a common noun, but rather it is regarded as equivalent (for Christians) to 'YHWH is a Trinity'.
DeleteAnd 'YHWH' is, of course, a proper name, not a common noun.
Actually, predication with a common noun would read quite differently. For instance, 'a dog is an animal' is a true predication of the common noun 'dog'.
I think the problem with your scheme is that we use 'God' with upper case 'G' as a proper name, denoting (for Christians) the God of Abraham and Jesus, the creator of the universe, YHWH.
If we want to use a common noun, we say 'god' (lower case 'g'), don't we?
Mr Hays, with all due respect, I find your answer to be evasive, perhaps because you realize that you have painted yourself into a corner with your own arbitrary definitions of the word God.If we apply your definitions let's see what we end up with.
DeleteIn 1 Cor. 8:6 if 'God' is understood as "a proper noun ... a synonym for the Father" then we get ,"yet for us there is one Father , the Father..." This can't be right.
If 'God' is understood as a "common noun... a categorical designation" then we end up with, "yet for us there is one who is in the category of God, the Father..." Is this what you wish to say?
If 'God' is understood as "an abstract noun ...has deity" then we end up with , "yet for us there is one who has deity or a divine nature, the Father..." Again, is this what you wish to say?
Your arbitrary definitions do not work for your trinitarian theology.
You said "God" has a different function in that text. So you have a fourth arbitrary definition of God? Please tell us what it is
Cook, you're equivocating and shifting the goal posts. You didn't ask what kind of noun "Yahweh" is but what kind of noun "God" is, in the sentence "God is a Trinity" (or "The Trinity is God").
DeleteIf I want to use a common noun synonym for "God", I don't need to use the lower case "god". I can say "the Deity".
Is Yahweh of course a proper name? In general, divine names for the one true Deity are appellatives rather than proper names. In addition:
"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.
Troy,
DeleteI didn't invent the distinction between different kinds of nouns. "God" is a noun. Given the fact that there are different kinds of nouns (abstract, concrete, common, proper), it's logical to ask what kind of noun "God" is.
Especially when Dale writes syllogisms to demonstrate that the Trinity is contradictory, that only works if the word "God" in each premise has the same meaning. Otherwise, his syllogism is vitiated by the fallacy of equivocation.
I never said every occurrence of "God" in the NT has to be one of three kinds of nouns. Rather, I pointed out that Dale's appeal to "God" is simplistic. I'm responding to Dale on his own terms. Sorry you have difficulty following the argument.
I didn't merely *say* that "God" has a different function in 1 Cor 8:6. I went on to explain the function. Respond to the actual argument, if you can.
I don't see where you explained the function of 'God' in 1 Cor. 8:6, you only said "the meaning is context-dependent."
DeleteI realized as soon as I published my comment that I made a mistake, but couldn't see how to edit my comment. What I should have said was that your application of the different definitions of the word 'God' is arbitrary. I understand that 'God' is used in different ways but we must be careful to not just arbitrarily apply the meaning that best supports our own theological presuppositions in any given text. So I will ask again what , in your opinion is the way we should understand 'God' in 1 Cor. 8:6?
i) Actually, the onus lies on Dale rather than Christians to show that "God" has the same meaning when Dale is constructing syllogisms to show that Trinitarian belief is inconsistent. It's up to him to make sure that his usage isn't equivocal, since these are *his* syllogisms.
Deleteii) I already explained what it means in 1 Cor 8:6:
That has it's background in the Shema, where the Deity goes by two designations: Elohim and Yahweh. The Greek counterparts are theos and kurios. Paul splits the Shema, assigning the Elohim designation to the Father and the Yahweh designation to the Son, according to the Greek synonyms.
Again, this is completely arbitrary. You are simply assuming your theological presupposition onto the text. You are assuming that kurios is a translation of YHWH, which it never is. It is used as a substitution for YHWH according to Jewish practice, not a translation. Kurios in this passage is being used as a translation of the Hebrew adon. Paul is not splitting the Shema between the Father and Jesus. He is adding to the Shema - the belief in the one God, who is the Father - the belief in His Messiah, the one adon among men. The trinitarian reading of this text is a simple case of back reading a later theological development into an earlier text. It doesn't work
Deletei) To begin with, you posit an artificial definition regarding what constitutes a translation. The LXX routinely uses Kurios to represent Yahweh in the OT. Whether or not you wish to call that a translation is beside the point; the point, rather, is that in paraphrasing the Shema, Paul's use of theos and kurios corresponds to Elohim and Yahweh in Deut 6:4 (Deut 10:17 may also lie in the background).
Deleteii) Kurios is no more or less a translation of Yahweh than theos for Elohim. Those are the Greek synonyms.
iii) The Hebrew text of Deut 6:4 uses the Tetragrammaton, not adon. When reciting the Shema, Jews substitute adon, but the background text for 1 Cor 8:6 employs the Tetragrammaton.
You've missed the point. If Paul would have written 1 Cor. in Hebrew how would it read "yet for us there is echad elohim, the Father ... and echad adon, yeshua hamashiach ..." here 'Father' would be numerically identical to Yahweh in the Shema and Yeshua is the lord Messiah. The Shema is not split, but acknowledgement of Yahweh's Messiah is added to what is required for salvation. You are badly mistaken in your interpretation.
DeleteOnce again, the Shema doesn't say adon but Yahweh, so if Paul wrote 1 Cor 8:6 in Hebrew, it would read "yet for us there is echad Elohim, the Father ... and echad YHWH, yeshua hamashiach" here 'Father' would be numerically identical with Elohim in the Shema while Yeshua would be numerically identical with Yahweh in the Shema (if you wish to use that philosophical jargon).
DeleteI think that probably deep down you know the absurdity of what you are saying, but because of your commitment to the trinity doctrine you have no choice but to hold to such an absurd interpretation of the text.
DeleteMr. Hays, I am going to give you one more chance to see your error. If 1 Cor. 8:6 is to be interpreted as you suggest then it loses it's grammatical connection with the preceding verse. Again, if Paul were writing in Hebrew v. 5 would say, "indeed there are many elohim and many adonim." It surely would not say, "indeed there are many elohim and many YHWH."
DeleteSo there is a grammatical flow to the whole passage:
v.5 "indeed there are many elohim and many adonim, v.6 yet for us there is one elohim ... and one adon ..."
If Yahweh is to be equated with anything in this Passage it is with the word 'Father'.
Now I call upon you to admit your error and publicly repent of twisting the words of the Apostle Paul to suit your own theological presuppositions.
Oh, Gosh, what are you–the Grim Reaper? You give me one more chance and if I blow my last chance you whisk my head off with your scythe? Are you this conceited because you're unitarian or are you unitarian because you're this conceited? Which comes first? Which is the effect?
DeletePaul isn't writing in Hebrew, and v5 is sarcastic. When translating the Shema into Greek, Elohim pairs off with theos while Yahweh pairs off with kurios.
In the Shema there's the one Elohim and the one Yahweh. Paul appropriates that to create a directly parallel between the Father as the one God and the Son as the one Lord. The structural analogy is crystal clear.
It was never my objective or obligation to convince you. I don't care what you believe. It's your funeral, not mine.
You can't say I didn't warn you - 2 Pet. 3:16
DeleteYou need to use some Windex on your bathroom mirror.
DeleteRe: many gods and many lords, does Troy not know that pagan gods ARE lords? Indeed, that is precisely what Ba'al means, since we're talking Hebrew here. Paul isn't bifurcating between pagan deities and pagan human sovereigns.
DeleteSoli Deo Gloria is exactly right. As I pointed out above:
Delete//But secondly, 2. In verse 5 Paul mentions pagan "gods" and "lords" in a way that's synonymous. Paul doesn't imply (nor did generally pagans believe) that without qualification "gods" normally were higher in rank and ontology than "lords". Rather, they were two terms that were interchangeably applied to various deities. So, if the "gods" and "lords" in verse 5 aren't necessarily ranked, then neither would be the Godship of the Father and the Lordship of the Son as Unitarianism would require.//
Maybe my last sentence is a bit confusing. I was saying that the Unitarian position would require that (or at least better fit with) "gods" and "lords" in verse 5 having some kind of ranking or subordination to fit their assumed ontological subordination of the Father and Yeshua in verse 6.
You are all missing the obvious. It doesn't matter what 'lords' in v.5 means. In v. 6 Paul is contrasting the 'one' with the 'many' of v. 5 - 'one God' in contrast to 'many gods' and 'one Lord' in contrast to 'many lords'. 'Lord in v. 6 cannot mean Yahweh for then you destroy the contrast . The kurios of v.6 must match the kurioi of v.5. You don't think Paul was saying , "indeed there are many gods and many yahwehs. do you?
DeleteThis is so obvious that your inability to see it is staggering.
No, it doesn't destroy the contrast since the contrast is between impostors and the real thing. Once again, v5 is sarcastic.
DeleteYes, I can't imagine why what "lords" means in verse 5 would matter. It certainly can't have any bearing on how we are to understand "Lord" in verse 6. It can't possibly have any impact on whether or not "Lord" in verse 6 is an appellation of deity. /sarcasm
DeleteTroy, if you take "One God" to mean that it excludes any other God including Christ as "God", then you'd have to take "One Lord" to mean it excludes any other Lord including the Father as "Lord". But clearly, the Father is also Lord. So, you don't really take "ONE Lord" literally and exhaustively. In which case, there's room for taking "One God" to not be exclusive. If your interpretation were correct, then verse 6 would have referred to the Father as "One God" and Jesus as [merely] "Lord", not "ONE Lord". As I wrote above:
Delete//I think a similar reductio could be applied to 1 Cor. 8:5-6. If Jesus is the "One Lord", then the Father cannot be the "One Lord". But it'll be said by Unitarians that in that passage the Father is called the "One God". However if Jesus can be called "One Lord" without denying the Father's One Lordship, then the Father being called "One God" shouldn't deny the possibility that Jesus can also be called the "One God". Especially for two reasons. 1. This passages has been shown by scholars to have Paul not only allude to the Shema, but to his applying the Shema to both the Father and Son. Distinguishing the Father and Son by the titles "God" and "Lord". And as Steve has pointed out, "Kurios is the standard translation for Yahweh in the LXX." Also, It's been noted that God is referenced in the Shema THREE TIMES!!!
Shema Yisra’el, YeHoVaH [1st mention] Eloheinu [2nd mention], YeHoVaH [3rd mention] Echad.//
This is why there are MANY triadic passages in the New Testament that include all three persons of the Trinity. As I've shown HERE.
For example:
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the SAME SPIRIT; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the SAME LORD; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the SAME GOD who empowers them all in everyone.- 1 Cor. 12:4-6
Or:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.- 2 Cor. 13:14
Interpreting "Lord" in verse 6 as the equivalent to YHVH is perfectly plausible since there are MANY MANY verses and passages in the NT where OT passages are quoted, cited or alluded to that were originally in reference to YHVH and are applied to Yeshua in the NT. I've listed many of them in my blogpost HERE.
Thanks Steve. No I am not equivocating, and you did not really answer my point. You blithely ignore the fact that 'God' for Christians is used as a synonym for 'YHWH', which is a proper name.
DeleteI cannot believe that you are not aware of this fact.
It looks like you are saying 'God' in 'God is a Trinity' should be read as 'the Deity', where 'deity' is a common noun.
OK fair enough, you are conceding that a common noun needs 'the' or 'a' in front of it, in order for it to make grammatical sense.
So, 'God' should actually be 'the God' in the phrase 'God is a Trinity', shouldn't it?
Can you please tell me who ever says 'the God is a Trinity'?!
If anybody did, he would be laughed at.
Face it, please, 'God' is used as a proper name for the God of Christians, ie YHWH, the creator of heaven and earth.
You appeared to be forced, by your statement, into a position which defies a) grammar b) normal usage.
It would interesting, as well, to know if you have any support for your position (When a Trinitarian says the Father is God, he's using "God" as a proper noun. A name for a particular individual. A synonym for the Father) from other trinitarians.
If you're unaware of divine appellatives in Scripture, you need to bone up on some basic scholarship.
DeleteYou also blew right past my excerpt from Britchto's monograph.
Instead, you resort to the argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Language is idiomatic. The fact that we speak of "the Deity" doesn't entail "the God" construction.
David - are you basing all your arguments on how English usually works or how Greek and Hebrew works?
DeleteSuch a good point.
DeleteMoreover, even in terms of English, it's a hybrid language, having a background in a Romance language (Latin) and Germanic language (Anglo-Saxon), not to mention tons of loan-words from different languages, so the rules vary depending on whether it's the Romance language or the Germanic language in English usage. And as you say, that's all beside the point anyway since the Bible wasn't written in English.
Thanks RS. We are all talking in English. The subject is the proper grammatical use of the word 'God'. Therefore your remarks about Greek and Hebrew are (obviously) irrelevant.
DeleteSteve you did not answer any of my points.
1) To say that 'God' in 'God is a Trinity' is a common noun is obviously ungrammatical.
I repeat, this is obvious to any speaker of English.
You should be saying 'The God'. But nobody ever says that, which is why, I think, you are reluctant to admit it!
2) You also seem very reluctant to admit that 'God' is used by Christians as a proper name for YHWH.
What a strange position you have talked yourself into!
I wonder, again, if you have any support for either of these, rather odd, positions you have taken. Do you?
Steve, sorry I forgot to address the Britcho extract. Yes he makes a valid point, but his statement that ' If Deity is a class with but one member' begs the question.
DeleteAnd in any case, it should be 'the Deity', not 'Deity'.
In fact, the class of beings we term 'god' (in English) has many members.
Only one of them is YHWH.
This being Christians (and Bible translators) render as 'God'.
NB you shift the goalposts by going to 'Deity'.
We are talking about the word 'God'.
i) Since I used "deity/the Deity" in my original post, I'm not shifting the goal posts. That's something I employed all along. I didn't suddenly change my usage in response to you.
Deleteii) No, the subject isn't the proper grammatical use of the word "God". That's just your diversionary tactic. And you don't dictate to me the terms of the debate. You're welcome to your own preferences, but you can't impose that on me.
iii) And even if this is a question of English usage, English synonyms include Latin derivatives as well as Anglo-Saxon derivatives. It's arbitrary for you to stipulate that I must restrict myself to the latter.
iv) And ultimately this isn't a matter of grammar but ideas. Different kinds of nouns didn't create the conceptual distinctions; rather, different kinds of nouns exist to represent prior conceptual distinctions.
v) I refuse to let you make logical fallacies a theological criterion. The fact that you have to defend unitarianism by resort to evident fallacies exposes the desperation of your own position.
Your ad populum fallacy is on the same level as atheists who define faith by asking lay Christians how to define faith.
It's possible to have an idiomatic articular construction using "God" as a common noun. Take the sentence "the Trinity is the one true God" or "the one true God is a Trinity".
DeleteDavid, suppose we were all speaking Chinese instead of English, do you think a discussion about how Chinese grammar works would impact the veracity of a theological point derived from scripture?
DeleteIt seems to me that you are flippantly ignoring the fact that when you translate between languages, grammatical and semantic differences are going to happen. Just because you wish everything to conform to the rules of the english language does not make it so.
Also, please do tell if you still believe that the God of the old testament is a monster, commanding rape in the book of Numbers. Since you are unitarian, I take it that you worship this "monster", yes?
As a little add on, David, since you don't believe Jesus is God, do you believe His standard of morality is higher than the God you worship whom you claim to have commmanded rape in the book of numbers?
DeleteThanks RS 1) When did I claim God commanded rape in Numbers?
Delete2) We are talking in English. Steve made his comments in English about the correct use of the word 'God'. I am correcting him on that.
Thanks Steve
DeleteI don't know why you think what I said is a logical fallacy.
Can you explain?
We are talking about your use of the word 'God', not 'Deity'.
Remember your explanation
' When a Trinitarian says the Father is God, he's using "God" as a proper noun. A name for a particular individual. A synonym for the Father.
When a Trinitarian says the Trinity is God, he's using "God" as a common noun. A categorical designation. Belonging to that class or genus. The Deity. "God" in a quantitative sense.'
You say ' It's possible to have an idiomatic articular construction using "God" as a common noun. Take the sentence "the Trinity is the one true God" or "the one true God is a Trinity".'
Yes exactly, just what I said!
You need the definite article don't you?
Otherwise 'God' is a proper name, denoting YHWH
You are using incorrect grammar.
That is a fact.
Maybe you could sharpen up your explanations for future reference.
So you're just being a pedant?
DeleteDKC,
DeleteI already explained how you committed a logical fallacy.
I illustrated my explanation using "Deity" as well as "God". None of my sentences were grammatically incorrect. Rather, your sentences were grammatically incorrect.
You have one bad argument which you keep belaboring.
David, on the Answering Muslims Blog, in a thread titled "Paul Slanted, David faltered, but the trinity toppled them both", you wrote:
Delete"The passage which was discussed was Numbers 31:17-18
‘Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.’
For the record I wrote on the thread
“I find these verses (and the many others in the OT like it) very troubling. I have not heard any explanation of them which fits the character of God as shown in Jesus, except the explanation that interprets them as basically mistakes by the writers, ie
“God never actually said that, Moses and the others just thought he did”
"
As to your comments about English, yes the conversation is in English, but it's about a text written in Hebrew and Greek. Thus, if those languages allow nuances and idioms that you are not familiar with in English, why persist in trying to "correct" it?
Troy, regarding John 1:18 the consensus of conservative scholars is slowly shifting back to interpreting monogenes as "only begotten" instead of something like "only" or "unique". According to one source [who I believe is Sam Shamoun], Wayne Grudem is even considering updating the ESV to read "only begotten" [According to this Facebook post]
ReplyDeleteHowever, the variant of "God" instead of "Son" is more likely original given that it's the more difficult reading. It's more likely that scribes attempted to "correct" the text to conform to the more popular "only begotten Son" than for scribes to strangely "correct" it to "only begotten God".
At first glance "only begotten God" would seem to weaken the idea that Christ is fully and truly God. Because it would suggest a temporal origination for the Son that amounts to a creation point. But that's not necessarily the case. Since, one option in Trinitarian theology is to affirm the traditional doctrine of the eternal generation/filiation of the Son of God from God the Father from all eternity, as well as the eternal procession/spiration of the Holy Spirit (from either the Father alone, or the Father and the Son, or the Father through the Son). With such a position, it can still truly be said that both the Son and the Spirit possess the same nature as the Father (either numeric identity or generic unity). I'm open to either numeric identity or generic unity, but I think the former does better in preserving and affirming monotheism.
Jesus is contrasting the deity of the Father against the deity of other gods. Then He proceeded to include Himself within the divine identity of The True God - afterall Jesus is not God apart from the Father.
ReplyDeleteDale Tuggy, when confronted with the witness of the Second Temple Judaism to the pluritarian nature of God, decided to appeal to the omnipotence of The Father to explain away the Pluritarian interpretation - an idea that failed to cross the minds of the so-called ancient Unitarian Jews. However, Dale Tuggy is even creating more problems for himself. According to Dale Tuggy, The Father can remain on His Throne in Heaven yet still be the very YHWH walking about on earth. Does he not realize that the very philosophical toolkit (especially that of strict identity) he is using to attack the Trinity does not leave room for his desperate *harmonization*? Apart from the fact that we find it absurd that The Father replicated in order to demonstrate that He too can soliloquize like humans, does it not occur to this heretic that this is another sly way of saying that The Father produced another self that is STRICTLY identical to Him such that Dale can identify the surrogate self as The Father?
Steve, are you ST, LT or RT?
ReplyDeleteHe's ET = extraterrestrial intelligence so beyond anything anyone on our planet has ever seen.
DeleteAre you asking whether Steve holds to Social Trinitarianism, Latin Trinitarianism and some other form of Trinitarianism? If so, what's RT?
DeleteI share the view of Warfield, Helm et al. that the members of the Trinity are autotheos. The Son and Spirit don't derive their person or nature from the Father.
DeleteAnnoyed Pinoy, by RT, I mean Relative Identity Trinitarianism which is what scholars like P.T. Geach, Nicholas Griffin, A.P. Martinich, Peter Van Inwagen etc. hold to.
DeleteThanks for your reply, Steve. That each of the members are autotheos is less convincing to me. I don't find the idea that The Son proceeding From The Father problematic. The early church fathers use the analogy of the sun to explain the Trinity. I think this analogy can go a long way in why the concept of procession of The Son and Spirit is more reasonable. Someone might be tempted to think that the doctrine of procession implies the existence of the Son and Spirit being later than that of The Father.
I believe that procession of The Son and Holy Spirit is as early as the existence of The Father. The Father cannot be God without His Word and Spirit. Since The Father had been God from eternity, it then goes that His Word and Spirit have been there from eternity.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-shadow-god.html
Deletehttp://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/10/symmetrical-or-monarchical.html
https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/09/reverse-image.html
https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/05/through-looking-glass.html
https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/04/infinity-mirror.html
A denial of the Trinity really lowers God to the same status as a creature, and exalts a creature to the status of God. Not only so, but as one reader rightly noted, it also involves the father essentially duplicating himself, one instance being in heaven raining down upon Sodom and Gomorrah and one upon the earth. Finally, it makes a total mockery of the scriptures as a whole by having the climax of revelation being a creature. Epistle after epistle showing the excellency of this one, the love of this one, the power of this one, holding the very fabric of the universe together, and this one who is perfect, sinless, powerful, exalted, glorious is to show us what? That God gave us someone other than Himself for us and that unitarianism is true.
DeleteWow.
That there are different models of the Trinity is no more of evidence for unitarianism than unitarianism itself having different models.
ReplyDeleteWhat all trinitarians agree upon however, is that the Father, Son and Spirit are by nature God, not different gods, but all having the same essence as the one God, YHWH. We would expect the understanding of the inner being of God to surpass finite man's understanding yet God has clearly revealed to us that He alone deserves to be worshipped. All glory, honour and praise be to Him for ever and ever. Amen.
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ReplyDelete