Your throne, O God, is forever and ever

In preparation for his debate with Michael Brown, Dale Tuggy did a post offering his interpretation of Heb 1:

https://trinities.org/blog/the-arguments-of-hebrews-1-2-part-1/

This also came up several times in the course of the debate. Before getting to the specifics, let's begin with a general observation: Tuggy appealed to a sensus plenior ("new meaning, second fulfillment") hermeneutic. Of course, that's a huge issue in Christian apologetics and biblical hermeneutics. The accusation is often made that when NT writers say Jesus fulfills the OT, they quote the OT out of context. 

So one problem with Tuggy's unitarian countermove is that he's contaminating the reservoir to poison Trinitarians, but that's the source of his own drinking water. The messiahship of Jesus must be validated by the OT. But if you appeal to a sensus plenior hermeneutic, that plays into the accusation that Jesus didn't really fulfill the OT. Indeed, because Jesus failed to fulfill the OT, NT writers have to twist the OT to make it appear as if he fulfilled the OT. Tuggy is too short-sighted to see that his sensus plenior hermeneutic is equally discrediting to a unitarian messiah. 

Also, notice that it is because of his exaltation that Jesus has become superior to the angels; again, this is not consistent with his being fully divine – in that case, he’d be eternally superior to them.

Tuggy never misses a chance to repeat the same mistake. He can never bring himself to assume the opposing viewpoint even for the sake of argument. The exultation of Jesus is not inconsistent with the deity and eternal superiority of the Son on Trinitarian grounds because it has reference not to the Son qua Son but the Son Incarnate, and the Son Incarnate can undergo demotions or promotions in his status. Tuggy constantly operates with a unitarian viewpoint when accusing the Trinitarian position of inconsistency. That's fundamentally confused. It's only inconsistent on unitarian assumptions, not Trinitarian assumptions. 

I take it that the name Jesus inherits at his exaltation is “Lord.”

“Lord” as in Yahweh.

Note that the context here these latter days (1-2) and then post-exaltation (2-4). This, and the fact that the Bible consistently credits God alone with the Genesis creation…

That's a unitarian assumption, but Trinitarians point to other passages as well which credit the Son with the Genesis creation (Jn 1; Col 1). Of course, that forces Tuggy to offer unitarian reinterpretations of those passages as well, so his argument is viciously circular. 

...makes it more plausible that the creation in v. 2 is the “new creation” Paul speaks of, which God accomplished through Jesus at this time (c. 33 AD). 

Since it's highly unlikely that Paul wrote Hebrews, it's methodologically dubious to filter Heb 1 through a Pauline lens. We need to interpret each writer on their own terms. 

Also, the one God is the ultimate source of the cosmos, but at very most, even if this is about the Genesis creation, note that it only says that God created through Jesus, which would make Jesus the instrument of creation, or the next to last source of the cosmos – not the creator in the sense God is the creator. So there is no help here for speculations that Jesus is “fully God” or “fully divine,” because that requires being the ultimate source of the cosmos.

What does that even mean? Does he mean in the Arian sense that the Son is the first creature who creates everything else? Does he mean God is the ultimate Creator whereas the Son is only the instrumental creator in the sense that the God creates the Son, who in turn, makes everything else? That would make the Son a Demiurge figure. Of course, Heb 1 doesn't say that or imply that.  

True, in the original Psalm, it is God/YHWH who is being spoken of, and his Genesis creation. This interesting biblical unitarian piece (HT: Rob Bjerk) argues that God is not the speaker in that Psalm, and so he can’t be speaking to the Son here. (The author is worried lest we read the passage as attributing the Genesis creation to Jesus, whereas the Bible consistently credits it to God alone.)

But the author of Hebrews is not going with the original context and meaning, but rather claiming to find a new meaning in it. And clearly, he’s still talking about the Son, not about God; he’s in his third contrast between the Son and angels. Buzzard’s Jesus was not a Trinitarian has a helpful appendix on this; basically, at least some Greek versions of Ps 102 make it sound like someone is speaking to someone else, which makes it easy for this author here to “see” that here God is addressing someone else as “Lord,” i.e. the exalted Son (compare with the “my lord” of Ps 110:1).

The reason the author of Hebrews makes God the speaker is not because he's dependent on a Septuagintal rendering. Rather, there's a pattern to how the author introduces OT passages. He operates with the theological presupposition that whatever Scripture says, God says. When quoting or introducing an OT passage, he bypasses the human author and attributes the statement directly to God or God's Spirit. So this isn't based on the LXX, but the author's view of Scripture, where God stands behind whatever Scripture says. Of course, he wouldn't deny the secondary human authorship of Scripture, but he prefers to go one step back to the primary divine authorship of Scripture. 

Note the “latter-day” context of the whole chapter after 1:1. Because of that, the “beginning” here and the creation (1:10) are best taken as the beginning of the new era, and Jesus’s “new creation.” These are part are parcel of his current exalted status, in virtue of which, the whole chapter argues, he is much superior to any angel.

That's a false dichotomy. In the OT, God is both creator and judge. The two are linked. 

It is unlikely that he introduces the time as these last days and then violently changes the subject to the beginning of the cosmos, and then back again to these last days.

1. It doesn't violently change the subject. To begin with, vv10-12 provide supporting evidence for v2. 

2. In addition, as one commentator explains:

Another theme of the quotation is that just as the Son was present and active from the beginning of time, so he will be at the end…the Son is eternal, a point which will become significant later in connection with Jesus' priesthood (see 7:3,24-25). J. Ramsey Michaels, Hebrews (Tyndale 2009), 338.

So the Son's past identity as Creator is necessary to his present identity as heavenly priest and agent of providence as well (as his future identity as eschatological judge_. Because he's divine, he's eternal at both ends. And that parallels Yahweh. Just as the OT God is the agent of creation, providence, and judgment, so is the Son, who created the world and sustains the universe (vv2-3). 

3. Finally, how are vv10-12 related to vv9-10? As two commentators explain:

In reinforcement of the ascription of the name "God" to the Son, the citation from Ps 101:26-28 ascribes to the Son what was first said of "the Lord," the God of Israel. L. T. Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (WJK 2006), 81.

In this section Christ is twice addressed as "God" (1:8a,9b)…The Jewish tradition centered on faith in one God (Deut 6:4), who was not be portrayed in human form or identified with human beings (Exod 20:4; Deut 5:8; 2 Macc 9:12; cf. Jn 5:18; 10:33). Hebrews uses the title "God" not in defiance of Israel's tradition, but on the basis of Israel's tradition using the words of Ps 45:6-7, which ascribe deity to the king that God has anointed, who here is identified as the exalted Christ. The final portion of the address elaborates what it means to call him "God" by identifying him as the one through whom all things were brought into being and who stands above the cycles of decay (1:1-10). C. Koester, Hebrews (Doubleday 2001), 202-3. 

So another function of Ps 102 in the argument of Hebrews is to unpack what is meant by calling the royal groom "God" in Ps 45. It's not used in an honorific sense, but in the true sense of the word. The Creator God. 

Therefore, quoting Ps 102 in the original sense doesn't "violently change the subject". To the contrary, that ties into v2 and vv8-9 (not to mention the future role of Christ as the final judge). 

Let's tie up some loose ends about Ps 45.

1. Standard commentaries on Ps 45 agree that the king is addressed as "God" (cf. Peter Craigie, John Goldingay, Allen Ross, Gerald Wilson, Nancy deClaissé-Walford/Rolf Jacobson/Beth Tanner).

2.  In the debate, Tuggy indicated that Ps 45 calls the king "God" because it's a coronation psalm, but Tuggy got his wires crossed. He may be thinking of some other Psalm, but Ps 45 is a royal epithalamion. It celebrates a wedding, not a coronation–albeit a royal wedding. 

3. Tuggy said the original referent in Ps 45 was a human king, which goes to show that Scripture sometimes refers to human beings as "gods". But Tuggy needs to be guarded in his reliance on critical scholarship inasmuch as critical scholars don't think OT writers foresaw the future. They think the OT contains false prophecies. They don't think Jesus fulfills the OT. They don't think these passages have anything to do with Jesus. 

That doesn't mean you can't cite scholars who may disagree with your overall position. But you need to have a principled reason for appealing to them about some things while you differ with then about other things. It can't just be an opportunistically selective appeal. 

4. Even if we offer a typological interpretation, where the passage is a wedding ceremony or coronation ceremony for an OT king, it would still be with a view to the future messiah. So the exalted language wouldn't be hyperbolic. Rather, it would truly be about a divine messiah, where the OT king is just a temporary stand-in.