tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post2356990088724210882..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Kissing the blarney stone of unitarianismRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-83497815053029376052015-08-18T14:10:01.022-04:002015-08-18T14:10:01.022-04:00Cont. "This is a perfect illustration of why ...Cont. "This is a perfect illustration of why I think your reading is uncharitable to the authors at hand, and that it takes a lot of chutzpah to put it out there are the correct reading. It's *apparently contradictory*, which we usually take as a very, very tough problem to overcome, unless we're willing to just say that the author is confused. The normal response is to carefully re-examine the various readings that imply the contradiction." <br /><br />Dale, God is not an ordinary object of knowledge, like a tree or a game of checkers. God is the most complex being in all reality. We'd expect God to be baffling in some respects. God is not a merely man-sized object of knowledge. <br /><br />This isn't like harmonizing historical accounts, where we're dealing with mundane events which we could fully grasp if we were there to see it unfold in real time and space. It's not like reconstructing questions from answers, when we only have one side of the correspondence (e.g. Pauline letters.). <br /><br />You don't even open your mind to the possibility that God is bigger than your mind. But unless God is bigger than your mind, what kind of "God" is he? <br /><br />Like a 9/11 Truther, you've developed a conspiratorial narrative that's become plausible to you. Hence, you dismiss any appeal to "mystery" as special pleading. But that doesn't take seriously the transcendent nature of God. <br /><br />"No. Rather, the point is that if some community lacks any term meant to express some concept, then it is likely that they have no such concept."<br /><br />That's like saying if anthropologists discover an Amazonian tribe with no word for jealousy, then they have no concept of jealousy. That's a ridiculous inference.<br /><br />"It needn't be a patristic example. Could be NT too. But we both know that there is no such word or phrase."<br /><br />Dale, complex concepts are not reducible to single words or phrases. At best, there can be technical words or jargon that stand for the concept, but you wouldn't know that from the word or phrase in isolation.<br /><br />The question at issue isn't the use of a word or phrase, but the logical implications of the Biblical data. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-75375392601254573082015-08-18T14:09:28.676-04:002015-08-18T14:09:28.676-04:00"Perhaps "doing exegetical theology"..."Perhaps "doing exegetical theology" here means quoting authors with whom Steve agrees."<br /><br />Dale, that's one of your dumb, uninformed responses:<br /><br />i) To begin with, I don't just quote authors I agree with. I mount my own exegetical arguments. I've done so in detail in many posts responding to you. Is your memories a sieve?<br /><br />ii) In addition, there's a difference between quoting scholarly opinion and quoting scholarly arguments. <br /><br />"1. There is only one divine being. 2. Jesus is divine, and the Father is divine. 3. - (Jesus = Father) [it is not the case that f and s are numerically identical] Assuming any two, you'll see that the third must be false. I urge you to try out all the combos."<br /><br />i) That's just you playing little word games. We could easily recast it as:<br /><br />There is only one God. The Trinity is God.<br /><br />The Father, Son, and Spirit share all the same divine attributes. <br /><br />No contradiction in that formulation.<br /><br />ii) In addition, I view the Trinity as a symmetry of persons who mirror each other. Are three mutual reflections one or three? They are both, considered from different viewpoints. <br /><br />iii) Likewise, we need to resist the temptation of visualizing Trinitarian distinctions as if these were spatial boundaries or surfaces, like separate physical objects. If, a la classical theism, we're dealing with timeless, spaceless entities, then they aren't distinct in *that* sense.stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-90850004606260201032015-08-17T16:55:34.410-04:002015-08-17T16:55:34.410-04:001. There is only one divine being.
2. Jesus is div...1. There is only one divine being.<br />2. Jesus is divine, and the Father is divine.<br />3. - (Jesus = Father) [it is not the case that f and s are numerically identical]<br /><br />Assuming any two, you'll see that the third must be false. I urge you to try out all the combos. <br /><br />"word=concept" fallacy.<br /><br />No. Rather, the point is that if some community lacks any term meant to express some concept, then it is likely that they have no such concept. It's a point about evidence. I agree that one may have a concept and yet lack a word to express it. <br /><br />It needn't be a patristic example. Could be NT too. But we both know that there is no such word or phrase. Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04601885187182140821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-77751286091097533522015-08-17T16:34:48.818-04:002015-08-17T16:34:48.818-04:00"When we add in the claim, which I'm sure..."When we add in the claim, which I'm sure you'll agree to, that the Bible teaches monotheism, we get a perfectly clear apparent contradiction."<br /><br />No, not a clear contradiction. Not even a prima facie contradiction. The Bible describes monotheism by contrasting the one true God with paganism, not by contrasting the one true God with Jesus. <br /><br />"Steve, please find me one usage of 'God' or any other term in any language, before Nicea, which in the original context of that place and time, was meant to refer to a tripersonal god."<br /><br />Nice exercise in misdirection, but patristic usage isn't my standard of comparison.<br /><br />In addition, you're committing the word=concept fallacy. The Trinity is a theological construct based on many lines of Biblical evidence. It doesn't depend on use of the word "God" to specify the Trinity. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-21805072359753068722015-08-17T16:12:49.390-04:002015-08-17T16:12:49.390-04:00"Uh…no. St. Matthew is not the message. St. L..."Uh…no. St. Matthew is not the message. St. Luke is not the message. St. John is not the message. St. Paul is not the message. The prophet Isaiah is not the message. The prophet Daniel is not the message. "<br /><br />*May* be. Sheesh. Got to read before you go off, Steve. First read carefully, then reply.<br /><br />Getting tired of the constant accusation that I'm lying. You play that card way, way too often. Also: that I'm just uninformed. Steve, you come off like a mean little guy, flailing away like that. I know that the truth can hurt, but I have tell you that sometimes people disagree with you *because* they understand what you're saying, not because they don't. Have some dignity, man. <br /><br />"It depicts both Father and Son as divine, yet distinguishes them. It doesn't try to harmonize that depiction."<br /><br />Classic positive mysterianism. Thanks for this clear example. When we add in the claim, which I'm sure you'll agree to, that the Bible teaches monotheism, we get a perfectly clear apparent contradiction. You're in this territory: http://trinities.org/blog/quote-loyola-tradition-trumps-sense-perception/ This is a perfect illustration of why I think your reading is uncharitable to the authors at hand, and that it takes a lot of chutzpah to put it out there are the correct reading. It's *apparently contradictory*, which we usually take as a very, very tough problem to overcome, unless we're willing to just say that the author is confused. The normal response is to carefully re-examine the various readings that imply the contradiction. That's what I've done, over the last decade and a half.<br /><br />"Actually, my side has existed since NT times." <br /><br />Nope. This is something you're not willing to see. Steve, please find me one usage of "God" or any other term in any language, before Nicea, which in the original context of that place and time, was meant to refer to a tripersonal god. Don't put it on the blog - go ahead and email it to me, because this would be a major discovery. It is implausible in the extreme that Christians c. 30-325 were believing in a tripersonal god, and never once used a term meant to refer to that god, as such. I've been hunting for one such usage between 325-80 but I haven't found such yet. <br /><br />(As you're quite the hothead, I must add that you should not confuse this with the demand that the word "Trinity" be in the Bible, a demand which I have never made, and never will make.)<br /><br />"he prudently avoids exegetical theology"<br /><br />LOL. Perhaps "doing exegetical theology" here means quoting authors with whom Steve agrees.Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04601885187182140821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-32460528811004560622015-08-11T02:13:54.430-04:002015-08-11T02:13:54.430-04:00Tuggy likes to play the ‘common-sense’ game. The p...Tuggy likes to play the ‘common-sense’ game. The problem is, the Bible isn’t just another human book. Would the Hebrews in Egypt been justified if they said, “But God’s never revealed his name to us before! How can God have a name?!” when Moses came to them? God can’t reveal what was previously unknown about himself? Is it an all or none game? Is the Creator really bound to reveal everything at once or nothing at all to his creation? <br /><br />Often I read liberal and non-believing OT scholars who like to remind me that there was, outside of the putative final redacted form of the OT books, absolutely no such thing as “monotheism” in the ANE. Since there was no monotheism, they reason, the OT simply couldn’t have originally taught it. They don’t believe God can reveal anything beyond what it’s social-historical allows for.<br /><br />It’s not as if we have any good reasons to believe there’s only one god apart from Scripture. Hume pointed out in the Dialogues that the first thing we think when we find some impressive piece of large complex architecture is not “one person made this” but “a team of persons made this.” Isn’t it obvious that we should apply this reasoning to the universe as well? Of course this perspective is easily the most represented across the entire world and across all periods. Doesn’t that count for something?<br /><br />One could easily isolate and decontextualize many OT texts to argue it knows nothing of “monotheism.” How many times does it have to use the term “god” for beings other than Yahweh before we see the “obvious?” Aren’t these texts strong positive evidence that the OT, before the Jews corrupted it, taught that there are many “gods?” Don’t the so-called “heavenly council” passages, the Psalms where it’s alleged other creation accounts in which Yahweh kills the chaos serpent (obviously another “god”) are preserved, and, of course, the infamous JEDP “layers,” all prove this beyond all reasonable doubt?<br /><br />Tuggy said:<br /><br />“When the scripture says that God is one, it is saying that Yahweh is unique, that he's the only god.”<br /><br />That is not at all clear to the one who doesn’t want to see. Deut 6:4 can be dismissed by those who would argue the author couldn’t possibly have made, let alone cared about, any such ontological statements. Rather it simply means that Yahweh is the only “god” that Israel should worship. <br /><br />Couldn’t a polytheist “Tuggy-like” fellow easily argue that unless we submit to his flat, acontextual, polytheistic reading of these texts that we are saddling our poor congregations with a bevy of “hopeless contradictions?” <br />Derekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15128440109055839127noreply@blogger.com