A Debate On Isaiah 9:6 And Jesus' Deity

Jonathan McLatchie and Samuel Green (Christians) recently debated Shabir Ally and Yusuf Ismail (Muslims) on Isaiah 9:6 and the deity of Jesus. They covered many related issues that went beyond that one verse. Here are some comments I posted about the debate on Facebook and YouTube, followed by links to other relevant articles at Triablogue:

Arguing For Jesus' Self-Perception

Hawk recently started a thread that was partly about how to argue for and from Jesus' self-perception. Did he view himself as God? If so, what are the implications? How should we go about arguing for and from our answers to these questions? And so on.

One of the issues that came up was the validity of arguing for the historicity of Jesus' identity claims based on the general reliability of the documents that report the identity claims. And that is a valid approach and one that's sometimes neglected.

But we can, and sometimes should, appeal to more than the general reliability of the documents. We should be open to using every argument we have, though there's no need to use every argument on every occasion. It often makes sense to be selective, even highly selective (e.g., because of time constraints).

One question to ask, then, is what lines of evidence we have for Jesus' self-perception that meet multiple standards of evidence simultaneously. The more, the better. There's no need for the evidence we cite to meet multiple standards, but it is helpful.

I discussed an example in a post late last year. We have many, often significantly independent, lines of evidence that Jesus viewed himself as the messianic figure of Isaiah 9. And I've argued elsewhere (linked in the article cited above) that the figure in Isaiah 9 is God. The evidence for Jesus' identifying himself as that figure comes from all four gospels, both from Jesus' words and his deeds, in both subtle and explicit forms, with partial corroboration from early non-Christian sources, with partial corroboration from non-conservative modern New Testament scholarship, etc. I've written a lot about Isaiah 9 over the years, and I'll be discussing it further during the upcoming Christmas season. But even if we just take into account what I've already posted, I think there's a strong case that the figure of Isaiah 9 is God and that we have many, highly varied, and highly reliable lines of evidence that Jesus identified himself as that figure.

I encourage people to research the issues surrounding Jesus' self-perception, and develop arguments about the subject, in ways that take the multifaceted nature of the evidence into account. Don't just look at Jesus' words. Look at his deeds as well. Think about the Old Testament backdrop of his life and other relevant contexts. Look at the subtle assumptions and allusions in his other comments, not just his comments you're most focused on. Ask yourself if there are some ways in which the evidence is corroborated by ancient non-Christian sources or modern non-conservative scholars, for example. There will be different degrees of evidence for different conclusions, and you'll have different degrees of confidence accordingly. But it's important to gather a large amount of evidence, even if the levels of probability vary a lot.

Part of what's so significant about approaching the issues in this manner is that the cumulative effect adds to the credibility of the argument. If Jesus perceived himself in a certain way, especially if that self-identification was of a more central nature, there's a better chance accordingly that his identifying himself that way will be reflected in more places and more often. It doesn't follow that we can dismiss a claim about his self-image if there's only one line of evidence for it, it's only reflected in a couple of places, or something like that. For a variety of reasons, even the features of Jesus' alleged self-perception that are less evidenced can be credible (people aren't equally revealing of every aspect of their self-perception; our historical records are so partial; etc.). But there's especially good reason for accepting and arguing on the basis of portions of Jesus' self-perception that are evidenced in the sort of multifaceted manner I'm focused on here.

If possible, let this cup pass from me

As I've remarked on more than one occasion, our ignorance of the future cuts both ways. On the one hand, if we knew the future, we'd make different decisions. In that sense, the future we knew was a counterfactual future. 

Suppose, though, we couldn't change the future we knew because we only knew what was going to happen, but not where, when and how. Then our foreknowledge of heartbreaking things that await us would shadow us from our youth, robbing us of the ability to enjoy the present. 

The reaction of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is a formidable example. As God Incarnate, Jesus doesn't have the luxury of ignorance regarding the future. He doesn't have that buffer. He knows what awaits him. From the time he was old enough to be capable of fully comprehending the prospect, he knew what lay in store for him down to the last literally excruciating detail. 

This also illustrates the way in which the two natures intertwine. His divine nature is the source of his foreknowledge. His divine nature informs his human nature. But he suffers in his human nature. 

Craig on eternal sonship

A sequel to this post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/05/is-god-son-begotten-in-his-divine-nature.html

Craig seems to think that in order to reject eternal generation, he must reject ontological sonship. If so, that's confused. These are theological metaphors. Metaphors are open-textured. Metaphors have multiple connotations. As such, most authors don't intend for every connotation of a metaphor to be in play. So the interpretive question is to identify the intended connotation.

Consider some of the connotations of fatherhood and sonship: fathers preexist sons, fathers age, fathers die, fathers and sons are embodied agents, sons undergo a maturation process, sons result from sex between a father and a mother.

When the NT uses father/son language for two persons of the Trinity, these connotations are clearly off the table. They reflect sheerly human things incompatible with deity. So the intended connotation(s) of the father/son terminology in NT Trinitarian usage is narrow. 

One connotation of the metaphor is derivation. Since that's incompatible with his position (I agree), he demotes the father/son terminology to the economic Trinity. It doesn't seem to occur to him that another connotation of the father/son metaphor is representation. A son resembles his father (like father/like son) and a son is especially qualified to act on behalf of his father, as his father's agent. Both are grounded in ontological sonship. 

Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature?

Regarding this article:

https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/theologica/article/view/16583/15603

1. I agree with Craig's critique of eternal generation.

2. I'm not going to comment on his general alternative (pp25-26). I don't care to get into the weeds of exegeting and assessing it. 

I've articulated my own model of the Trinity on numerous occasions. I'll stick with that.

3. However, a basic problem with Craig's position in this article is reducing the Father/Son distinction to the economic Trinity. That's mistaken because, on occasion, the NT clearly uses "Son of God" (or "Son" for short) as a divine title. His identity as the ontological Son of God figures in his deity. If he's the Son of God, then by implication he's divine. Reducing the Father/Son distinction to the economic Trinity can't explain that entailment in NT usage. And it's not a minor point. 

High Christology

Some Bible scholars have a low Christology. That's becomes somescholars are highly secularized, so they don't believe we live in the kind of world that the Bible describes. They think that's fictional. So it's really less about interpreting the NT witness to the Trinity or the Incarnation but their belief that the world is a kind of snowglobe. There is no afterlife. There is no divine involvement in the world. There's no room in their worldview for a divine Incarnation. 

Given their worldview, they don't think it's possible for the NT to have a high Christology that's true. They don't think we live in that kind of world. So their low Christology isn't really about what the NT teaches, but their understanding of reality. Given their closed-system worldview, they are bound to view NT Christology as legendary/mythological pious fiction. Even if the NT has a high Christology, that doesn't map onto reality

So a lot of this is driven, not by exegesis but by their view of historicity and reality. Although Hurtado was something of a theological moderate, he wasn't an inerrantist, he was heavy into redaction criticism, and I don't think he had a strong view of divine revelation, so for him there's bound to be an evolutionary Christology in the NT which has antecedents in speculative theological developments in 2nd Temple Judaism. He doesn't think the Enochian literature is historical. It's just pious fiction. I agree. Point, though, is he doesn't draw a categorical line between that and Scripture. It all has an element of legendary embellishment. It ranges along a continuum. So that's less about exegesis than his view of Scripture and the history of ideas. 

This is even more pronounced in the case of James McGrath. I believe he used to be evangelical, but lost his faith in grad school and is now a progressive. It isn't possible for McGrath to have a high Christology because he doesn't believe we live in that kind of world. He's basically a secularist. His closed-system worldview precludes the possibility that the NT presents a realistic Christology. So this isn't about exegesis but his worldview. For him, NT Christology has to be pious fiction. There's a mismatch between the Bible and reality. The Bible tells stories about divine intervention, angels, life after death, God, Incarnation, the Resurrection, &c., but these don't correspond with what really happens. 

So it's important when reading monographs about the historical supernatural Jesus to keep in mind that the conclusions are often predetermined, not by exegesis, but by the scholar's view of the supernatural and the historicity of Scripture. 

10 or so dumb reasons to reject the Trinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YHjvkTbJuI

Good thing it amounts to a nice round number. If they only had 9 reasons, I might still be hanging in the balance, but that tenth reason is the clincher tipping the scales for unitarianism!

In fact, their ten reasons seem to be more than ten in some respects, but repetitious in other respects, so my numbering will go over ten. 

1. God cannot die

An obtuse objection to the Incarnation. If Jesus just is God, then Jesus can't die. But of course, that's not the Trinitarian position. Rather, Jesus is a composite individual: the divine Son in union with a human soul and human body. So Jesus vis-a-vis his body can die. 

That's analogous to dualism; we say Methuselah died when he underwent biological death, even though he has an immortal soul.

The physical death of Jesus is a necessary but insufficient condition for atonement. 

2. Does God need to be resurrected?

This piggybacks on the same blunder as #1. If Jesus just is God, then he doesn't need to resurrected, but God Incarnate is subject to resurrection. 

3. Unless you're a hypostatic union–a composite of two natures–Trinitarian the resurrection offers no hope for you

That's hard to respond to because it's not an argument. It's unclear what the claim amounts to. It's not incumbent on Trinitarians to reconstruct the intended argument.

Is the claim that unless the redeemed are just like the redeemer, there's no hope for the redeemed? Is that the general principle? If so, how does that follow?

In the case of Jesus, what is resurrected isn't the hypostatic union but the body. The death of Christ didn't dissolve the hypostatic union. The soul remained in union with the Son.

What was lost was biological life. Why must the nature of Christ parallel human nature in every respect for the physical resurrection of Christ to parallel the physical resurrection of humans? 

Strictly speaking, a resurrection doesn't require an atonement but an exercise of divine omnipotence. At the general resurrection, the damned will be raised, but not because they were redeemed. 

4. Jesus can't be a mediator between God and man if he is God

The video keeps repeating the same blunder. If Jesus just is God, then he can't play mediator between God and man. But once again, that's a straw man. Why are the unitarians on this video unable to accurately represent the position they presume to debunk? 

5. A God-man can't be tempted and so can't overcome sin–because he was made in every way like this brothers

i) That does raise some theologically significant issues. I've discussed this objection on several occasions. For instance:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/04/was-god-incarnate-tempted.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/04/is-desire-to-sin-sinful.html

ii) To begin with, Heb 4:15 is hyperbolic. Taken without qualification, this means Jesus is tempted to have sex with teenage boys or handsome twenty-something males. Yet that's only be possible if Jesus is homosexual. And if he's homosexual, then he's impervious to heterosexual temptation. At best, a unitarian has to contend that Jesus is bisexual. 

iii) The unitarian alternative fails to explain what makes Jesus sinless. What makes him the exception to the universal rule that humans are sinful? Did God protect him from succumbing to sin? What gave Jesus a special advantage to resist sin? 

6. A God-man can't ask God to bypass the cup because he'd already knows the answer 

i) In a two-minds Christology, the human mind of Jesus is not omniscient.

ii) In addition, it's psychologically possible (indeed, commonplace) to know your duty but be emotionally conflicted about your duty and wish to avoid an especially onerous obligation. And keep in mind that this was a voluntary mission. A self-imposed duty. The Son had no absolute obligation to save sinners. 

7. A God-man can't authentically overcome to succeed where Adam failed. Only a human Jesus can set the example 

i) This assumes the primary role of Jesus is to set an example. Yet even on unitarian grounds, Jesus often does things most of us can't, like performing spectacular miracles.

ii) Salvation isn't a contest between evenly-matched contenders. It's not about fair-play. If a weak swimmer is drowning until a lifeguard saves him, that's because the lifeguard is a stronger swimmer. You might complain that the lifeguard has an unfair advantage, but that's why he can rescue weaker swimmers from drowning. It's not about emulating the lifeguard. His role is not to set an example. He role is to have superior swimming skills.

8. Different versions of the Trinity

True, and there are different models of unitarianism. A unitarian can be an Arian, Socinian, deist, Molinist, open theist, fatalist, predestinarian, Muslim, Rabbinic Jew, or goddess worshiper. 

9. Sola scriptura 

Sola scriptura incompatible with subordinating our theology to extrabiblical language and conclusions of later church councils? Trintarians are expected to agree with key metaphysical terms defined in the church councils of the fourth century, viz. the Tripersonality of God, how a divine essence can be shared between persons. 

i) It's true that sola scriptura is incompatible with rubber-stamping the formulations of ecumenical church councils. However, sola scriptura doesn't rule out the use of extrabiblical language. What matters is not the words we use but the concepts. Do extrabiblical words convey biblical concepts? 

ii) It's true that Protestants should scrutinize conciliar formulations and reject them if they run counter to the witness of Scripture. But many Bible scholars have made a detailed exegetical case for the deity of Christ and Incarnation of the Son (not to mention the Trinity in general). So this objection is at best directed at high-church Protestants. 

iii) Moreover, there are Trinitarians like Herman Alexander Röell, B. B. Warfield, Paul Helm, John Frame, John Feinberg who do takes issue with the Nicene paradigm. 

10. At odds with OT monotheism

i) Compared to creatures and false gods, there are three agents who stand out in the OT: Yahweh, the Spirit of Yahweh, and the Angel of Yahweh. These are presented as occupying the divine side of reality. 

ii) The representation of God as an old man on a throne is anthropomorphic. God has no actual appearance. 

iii) In the OT, Yahweh doesn't represent the person of the Father in the NT. OT usage isn't that discriminating. To the contrary, the NT repeatedly represents Jesus as Yahweh Incarnate. 

11. Trinitarians could start by explaining how two of us can share the same essence of humanity and be two beings but when three persons share the same essence of divinity, they're one being.

i) "Being" is a very generic concept. A Trinitarian could consistently say that God is one being and three beings. The word "being" doesn't do much conceptual work. It isn't a discriminating descriptor. It's more of a verbal placeholder. 

ii) Human beings exemplify a human nature, as properties instances. Each human being is an individual sample of human nature. A concrete, finite instance or copy. 

iii) By contrast, the divine nature is not some abstract generic essence that exists over and above or independent of the Trinitarian persons. The divine nature isn't separable from the Trinitarian persons. God is the exemplar. Each person exhaustively contains the entire essence, not a sample. The Trinitarian persons aren't copies of a divine nature 

12. Speculations about Jesus having two natures imagines that somehow in the one Jesus there is an eternal divine nature and also a complete human nature consisting of a body inside the one person possessing both natures is supposed to be the divine person, the second person of the Trinity.

i) This is hard to comment on because the sentence doesn't scan. As it stands, the sentence is somewhat unintelligible. 

ii) The complete human nature consists of a human soul (or mind) as well as a human body.

iii) "Person" is a term of art, and the meaning varies depending on whether we're working with Patristic usage, Cartesian usage, modern philosophy of mind (e.g. first-person viewpoint). 

iv) Some Trinitarians have reservations about an anhypostatic union. Details aside, the basic idea is that the body and soul of Jesus don't exist apart from the hypostatic union but by virtue of the hypostatic union. They have no independent existence. The combination only exists for purposes of the Incarnation.  

13. Such a divine person would be playacting anytime he didn't know something or couldn't do something or had to overcome temptation. 

Unless you're an open theist or Mormon, some of God's interactions with Adam, Abraham, and Moses are playacting, as if God is uninformed and indecisive. 

14. "God the Son" doesn't appear anywhere in the NT.

In the NT, Jesus is called" "God" and "the Son of God". So "God the Son" is a derivative biblical title that combines two things said about Jesus in the NT. 

15. Unitarians suffer from a prejudice about complexity. Yet there are things in the created order which run deeper than the human mind can fully fathom. It that's the case, then we'd expect God to be more complex than his finite creation. There's no presumption that God will be transparent to human reason. To the contrary, that's an antecedently false presumption. Unitarians worship a man-sized God. But if God exists, there will be truths about God we can't fully absorb due to our innate intellectual limitations. 

The kenosis theory

From John Frame's Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (pp 392n11, 881-882):

"Kenosis" Christologies, of course, do maintain that when the Son of God became man, he set aside some or all of his divine attributes. But God cannot be God, as we have seen, without his attributes. If the incarnate Christ lacked any essential divine attribute, then he was not God in the flesh.

But some have argued that the “emptying” (kenosis) of verse 7 (NASB) means that when Jesus became man he divested himself of some, or all, divine attributes. This view has become known as the kenosis theory. But if Jesus, in his incarnation, divested himself of any essential divine attributes (morphe), as on this view, then during his incarnation (which continues without end!) he was and is not God at all. For God is not God without his essential attributes. But the idea that Jesus was not God when he was in the flesh contradicts a vast amount of biblical data, as we have seen. The nature of the kenosis of Philippians 2:7 can be understood perfectly well as the self-humbling of God’s servant, expressed for example in the servant songs of Isaiah, which lie behind the language of verse 8.¹³ That is, of course, Paul’s point in the larger context. Jesus’ self-humbling is an example for the believers in Philippi, to serve one another rather than themselves. This is an ethical point, not a metaphysical one. Paul is telling them to behave differently, not to divest their metaphysical status (finite humanity) to become something else.

From Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine:

Did Jesus Give Up Some of His Divine Attributes While on Earth? (The Kenosis Theory).

Paul writes to the Philippians,

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Phil. 2:5–7)

Beginning with this text, several theologians in Germany (from about 1860–1880) and in England (from about 1890–1910) advocated a view of the incarnation that had not been advocated before in the history of the church. This new view was called the "kenosis theory," and the overall position it represented was called "kenotic theology." The kenosis theory holds that Christ gave up some of his divine attributes while he was on earth as a man. (The word kenosis is taken from the Greek verb kenoō, which generally means "to empty," and is translated "emptied himself" in Phil. 2:7.) According to the theory Christ "emptied himself" of some of his divine attributes, such as omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, while he was on earth as a man. This was viewed as a voluntary self-limitation on Christ’s part, which he carried out in order to fulfill his work of redemption.²⁷

But does Philippians 2:7 teach that Christ emptied himself of some of his divine attributes, and does the rest of the New Testament confirm this? The evidence of Scripture points to a negative answer to both questions. We must first realize that no recognized teacher in the first 1,800 years of church history, including those who were native speakers of Greek, thought that "emptied himself" in Philippians 2:7 meant that the Son of God gave up some of his divine attributes. Second, we must recognize that the text does not say that Christ "emptied himself of some powers" or "emptied himself of divine attributes" or anything like that. Third, the text does describe what Jesus did in this "emptying": he did not do it by giving up any of his attributes but rather by "taking the form of a servant," that is, by coming to live as a man, and "being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:8). Thus, the context itself interprets this "emptying" as equivalent to "humbling himself" and taking on a lowly status and position. Thus, the NIV, instead of translating the phrase, "He emptied himself," translates it, "but made himself nothing" (Phil. 2:7 NIV). The emptying includes change of role and status, not essential attributes or nature.

A fourth reason for this interpretation is seen in Paul’s purpose in this context. His purpose has been to persuade the Philippians that they should "do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves" (Phil. 2:3), and he continues by telling them, "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Phil. 2:4). To persuade them to be humble and to put the interests of others first, he then holds up the example of Christ: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . ." (Phil. 2:5–7).

Now in holding up Christ as an example, he wants the Philippians to imitate Christ. But certainly he is not asking the Philippian Christians to "give up" or "lay aside" any of their essential attributes or abilities! He is not asking them to "give up" their intelligence or strength or skill and become a diminished version of what they were. Rather, he is asking them to put the interests of others first: "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Phil. 2:4). And because that is his goal, it fits the context to understand that he is using Christ as the supreme example of one who did just that: he put the interests of others first and was willing to give up some of the privilege and status that was his as God.

Therefore, the best understanding of this passage is that it talks about Jesus giving up the status and privilege that was his in heaven: he "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (or "clung to for his own advantage"), but "emptied himself" or "humbled himself" for our sake, and came to live as a man. Jesus speaks elsewhere of the "glory" he had with the Father "before the world was made" (John 17:5), a glory that he had given up and was going to receive again when he returned to heaven. And Paul could speak of Christ who, "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor" (2 Cor. 8:9), once again speaking of the privilege and honor that he deserved but temporarily gave up for us.

The fifth and final reason why the "kenosis" view of Philippians 2:7 must be rejected is the larger context of the teaching of the New Testament and the doctrinal teaching of the entire Bible. If it were true that such a momentous event as this happened, that the eternal Son of God ceased for a time to have all the attributes of God—ceased, for a time, to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, for example—then we would expect that such an incredible event would be taught clearly and repeatedly in the New Testament, not found in the very doubtful interpretation of one word in one epistle. But we find the opposite of that: we do not find it stated anywhere else that the Son of God ceased to have some of the attributes of God that he had possessed from eternity. In fact, if the kenosis theory were true (and this is a foundational objection against it), then we could no longer affirm Jesus was fully God while he was here on earth.²⁸ The kenosis theory ultimately denies the full deity of Jesus Christ and makes him something less than fully God. S. M. Smith admits, "All forms of classical orthodoxy either explicitly reject or reject in principle kenotic theology."²⁹

It is important to realize that the major force persuading people to accept kenotic theory was not that they had discovered a better understanding of Philippians 2:7 or any other passage of the New Testament, but rather the increasing discomfort people were feeling with the formulations of the doctrine of Christ in historic, classical orthodoxy. It just seemed too incredible for modern rational and "scientific" people to believe that Jesus Christ could be truly human and fully, absolutely God at the same time.³⁰ The kenosis theory began to sound more and more like an acceptable way to say that (in some sense) Jesus was God, but a kind of God who had for a time given up some of his Godlike qualities, those that were most difficult for people to accept in the modern world.

Is the desire to sin sinful?

This raises some interesting issues:

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2020/04/07/impeccability-and-temptation/

1. One issue was whether Jesus was impeccable or merely sinless. My own position is that by virtue of the hypostatic union, he was impeccable because the divine nature exerts control over the human nature. In that respect, it isn't possible for Jesus to succumb to sinful temptation.

2. However, the post is raising a different, albeit related issue. Not whether it was possible for Jesus to give into sinful temptation, but to feel sinful temptation. 

3. I'd add that we don't have to answer the question directly. We can address the question at a more generic level. As a general or universal principle, is it necessarily sinful to desire sin? The question in reference to Jesus will answer itself depending on the general principle. So we can bypass the specific application to Jesus and focus on the question of whether, in principle, it's intrinsically sinful to desire sin?

4. I'll explore that momentarily, but before doing so draw two distinctions unique to Jesus:

Whether or not it's always sinful to desire sin, certain desires are intrinsically sinful. For instance, sexual desire for prepubescent children is intrinsically sinful. You must already be morally twisted to have that kind of desire.  There has to be a prior moral derangement for some things to be desirable. So I'd say Jesus can't desire intrinsically sinful things. That doesn't follow from the stronger principle of impeccability but the weaker principle of sinlessness.

5. In addition, there are second-order desires where committing sin engenders a desire to sin that contingent on committing sin. For instance, there's a subculture of faux vampirism where people drink each other's blood. To my knowledge, humans have no natural appetite for human blood. But if you experiment, I suppose that could become an acquired taste. I don't know that for a fact. I haven't studied the issue. But it will suffice as a hypothetical illustration. 

For the same reason as (4), Jesus can't have a second-order desire to sin. That doesn't follow from the stronger principle of impeccability but the weaker principle of sinlessness.

6. Back to the main issue. It may seem like a tautology or truism or self-evident that it's necessarily sinful to desire sin. Perhaps. But I think the plausibility of that intuition relies on keeping it on an abstract plane. When, however, we consider concrete examples, it may lose plausibility. What we find intuitively compelling or plausible is often dependent on paradigm-examples; it may break down in the face of counterexamples. It's not that the examples are necessarily wrong. The fallacy is overgeneralizing from certain kinds of examples. 

7. Let's begin with a cliche example. A normal man sees a beautiful woman. That automatically triggers sexual desire. Indeed, it may trigger sexual arousal.

Since premarital and extramarital sex are sinful, it might seem self-evident that his desire is sinful. Sexual desire is shorthand for desiring to have sexual relations. 

Yet it's hard to see how that can be true. If straight men didn't have a sexual desire for women, they'd lack a sufficient motivation to get married. So you might say the illicit desire is a necessary condition to incentivize the licit outlet of marriage. You must have sexual desire when you're still single to want marriage.

It also seems implausible to think that kind of sexual desire is a result of the Fall. But I won't argue the point. 

BTW, I'm not suggesting sex is the only motivation for marriage. But realistically, and in most cases, it's a sine qua non. 

8. Let's consider cases where there's a psychological conflict between altruistic duty and self-preservation. Take a situation where your odds of survival are enhanced if you leave an ailing friend behind but diminished if you stay behind to care for him. Suppose on a camping trip he comes down with a contagious, life-threatening illness. He might die, and even if he survives, he will become incapacitated during the cycle of the disease. And he will certainly not survive if you abandon him when he's incapacitated. His only shot at survival is if you provide for his needs while he's unable to provide for himself.

But the more direct contact and prolonged contact you have with him, the greater the odds that he will infect you, so that you may die in the process. Hence, your altruistic duty is in tension with your instinctive fear of death. A part of you has a hardwired aversion to risking your own life to save his. You have an inclination to desert him. If it's sinful to desert him, is it sinful to desire to do so? 

Yet we could turn around. The fact that moral heroism may conflict with natural desire affords an opportunity or test to do the right thing when it's costly. If the sacrifice didn't cut against the grain, it would be morally cheap. So in situations like that, having a desire to sin seems to be an instrumental good. It draws forth a second-order virtue. 

So my provisional conclusion is that it's not inherently sinful to desire sin. Rather, that's context-dependent. And that in turn answers the question about Jesus. 

Was God Incarnate tempted?

A part of me wonders why unitarians churn out painfully incompetent videos like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsfxIhQ6go0&feature=youtu.be

1. A problem many atheists have when attacking Christianity is that because they hold it in such intellectual contempt, they are unable to take it seriously even for the sake of argument. But this means their attacks on Christianity are sophomoric. By the same token, the unitarians who made this video lack the intellectual patience to acknowledge and engage Christian responses to their half-baked critique. They can't be bothered to consider the implications of the two-natures of Christ. That's because they don't believe in the two-natures of Christ. But if they're going to say the Incarnation is contradictory, they have to show it's contradictory on the model they reject. If, say, a Christian theologian operates with a two-minds Christology, then it's not contradictory for Jesus to be tempted in reference to his human mind but not his divine mind. The unitarians who produced this video are too jejune to distinguish between what they think is factually true and what they think is logically consistent. 

2. I'd add that quoting passages which say Jesus was "tempted" is not very informative inasmuch as temptation can mean more than one thing. On the one hand, it can mean exposure to an external inducement. On the other hand, it can mean to feel the appeal of something. The second kind of temptation is psychological. But it's possible to be exposed to something intended to be tempting, which some people find tempting, which others may not find attractive, or may even find repellant. 

I once read about a failed attempt by Ava Gardner to seduce Anthony Perkins. Gardner was one of the all-time great Hollywood beauties, but as she quickly discovered, Perkins wasn't wired like a normal man, so he didn't find her overtures tempting. Her effort was future from the start. 

My immediate point is not to determine in which sense Jesus could be tempted, but to point out that just seizing on the word "tempted" doesn't settle the issue because the concept is ambiguous. We're apt to read into it more than the word itself implies. 

Is Jesus the true God in 1 John 5:20?

R. Schnackenburg,82 who has given us the best commentary on 1 John, argues strongly from the logic of the context and the flow of the argument that "This is the true God" refers to Jesus Christ. The first sentence in 5:20 ends on the note that we Christians dwell in God the Father ("Him who is true") inasmuch as we dwell in His Son Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus is the true God and eternal life. Schnackenburg argues that the second sentence of 5:20 has meaning only if it refers to Jesus; it would be tautological if it referred to God the Father. His reasoning is persuasive, and thus there is a certain probability that 1 Jn 5:20 calls Jesus God—a usage not unusual in Johannine literature. Raymond E. Brown, 'Does the New Testament call Jesus God?', Theological Studies 26 (1965), 558.

A priori inerrancy

Lydia McGrew continues to do presentations and interviews on her recent book The Mirror or the Mask:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMdIENUFTGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAjVeGCG78

In the webinar, Lydia draws a distinction between two different approaches to inerrancy: a priori and inductive (1:41-42 min.)

She rejects both, but she's more sympathetic to the inductive approach. That's consistent with her evidentialist epistemology. I think it's safe to say that if she was an inerrantist, she'd be an inductive inerrantist rather than an a prior inerrantist. She draws a similar distinction in The Mirror and the Mask:

Most of the time the term "inerrancy" refers to an a priori approach in which one assumes for theological reasons related to the doctrine of inspiration that the biblical documents are inerrant (in their original MSS). That certainly doesn't describe me. I think we have to see whether or not there are errors by investigation (52). 

What's striking, though, is that she's not opposed to a priori inerrancy in principle. In her interview with Phil Fernandes, she says

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrek9fQnx1w

I don't think Jesus was mistaken about anything. Jesus was God, so I never say Jesus just made a mistake (1:15-16 min).

So here she takes the position that Jesus is inerrant by virtue of his deity. But that's a priori inerrancy, which assumes for theological reasons related to Christology that the teaching of Christ is inerrant. 

Yet that raises the question of why a priori inerrancy is consistent with evidentialist epistemology when indexed to the person of Christ but inconsistent when indexed to Scripture. Why does the deity of Christ entail or warrant a priori inerrancy but divine inspiration does not? 

It's true, of course, that God uses human agents in the process of inspiration, but by the same token, God uses human agency in the Incarnation. In both cases there's a human medium, as well as divine agency behind the human medium, operating through the human medium. 

Did Jesus die for Klingons?

Christian Weidemann argues:

Every major religion on Earth could easily accommodate the discovery of (intelligent) alien life, with one exception: Christianity.

...Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

(Source)

1. And this is from a lecturer in Protestant theology! With "friends" like these...

2. Why isn't it possible for Christ to have died "only" for humans? Suppose intelligent aliens exist, but suppose they likewise rebelled against God. So they're fallen too. In that case, why should God's "love" extend to rebels? What about God's justice? Is it "incompatible with God's love" if God doesn't rescue Satan and the fallen angels?

3. Is it "preposterous" if an "earthly Jesus" died for other extraterrestrials? What if other extraterrestrials in the universe are also human?

4. Weidemann assumes evolutionary mechanisms shape our morality, but that's highly contentious. He'd have to mount a case for this for a start.

Besides, just because an act is "selfish" doesn't necessarily mean it's sinful. It's selfish for me to walk on the beach alone when I could be having a conversation with a friend, but it's not necessarily sinful for me to do so.

In theory it's possible aliens could have evolutionarily "selfish traits". Such as caring more about themselves than other aliens. But that's not necessarily sinful. Just like it's possible humans might care more about other humans than other animals, but still care for other animals.

5. The multiple incarnations dilemma is an interesting one. Granted, I'm no philosopher or theologian, but I'll try to take a stab at this:

a. For one thing, why assume "God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously"? Why couldn't God incarnate himself sequentially?

b. What's more, even if the Son of God incarnated himself simultaneously, I don't see how this would be problematic if, as most traditional Christians believe, God is outside spacetime. Why couldn't a timeless God have multiple instances of himself at multiple points in the spacetime continuum? Take the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Lewis wrote about Aslan in Narnia as well as Maleldil in Perelandra. We know Lewis meant both to be the Son of God. I envision Narnia and Perelandra sort of (not quite) paralleling other worlds. (Indeed, consider whether God the Son could have become incarnate in parallel universes rather than other worlds within the same universe.)

c. I assume some form of Cartesian dualism is true. If so, then it's possible for humans to become disembodied. Our souls can be decoupled from our bodies (at death). We live on despite the death of our physical bodies. Meanwhile our corpses rot away; they become dust and ashes. At the same time, God promises his people new bodies in the world to come. As such, it's possible for our souls to inhabit more than one body. (As an aside, this likewise calls to mind scifi shows like Altered Carbon where people have their minds uploaded to a cloud, then downloaded to various bodies.)

Why couldn't something like this be true of the Son of God too? However an objection might be humans cannot possess more than one body at the same time. Perhaps a response could be that that's not necessarily the case for the Son of God. For one thing, he is omnipresent, unlike humans.

d. As far as the issue of identity, was the Son of God's pre-resurrection body identical to his post-resurrection body, given his pre-resurrection body died and deteriorated?

e. Weidemann floats the rejoinder that the salvation of extraterrestrials could have occurred with "alternative means of salvation" absent the incarnation (I agree). However, he immediately dismisses it because it means the Christian is "geocentric". However I don't see what's necessarily wrong with "geocentrism"? Why is it necessarily morally problematic for God to have saved Earthlings by having the incarnation (and crucifixion and resurrection)?

If anything, wouldn't the incarnation imply how far the moral rot in humans has spread that God the Son had to become flesh like us to save us rather than implying anything virtuous about humans? There's no room for pride in the criminal who had to have another pay for his crimes because he had no other options for restitution left to him.

Eternal sonship

1. I recently ran across the question of whether it's consistent to affirm the eternal sonship of Christ but disaffirm the eternal generation of Christ. To which I'd answer: yes!

2. Both sonship and generation are related metaphors, and so it might seem illogical to affirm one but disaffirm the other. But they're not identical metaphors. In addition, theological metaphors are analogies, and so the question is always how much to include in the analogy and what to exclude. What is the metaphor designed to illustrate? How far does the metaphor extend?

3. As I've discussed before, I think the significance of the sonship metaphor in reference to Christ is representational, in two related ways:

i) It's a way to indicate resemblance. Two things that could not be more alike but still be distinct. No one is more like a father than is son, or vice versa.

(Twin brothers might be a similar metaphor, but the father/son relation is far more dominant in the ancient world.) 

Which carries the implication that they are two of a kind. And, indeed, the NT often uses the sonship of Christ as a divine title.  The unique sonship of Christ implies the deity of Christ.

ii) If (i) is a metaphysical claim, that in turn has a practical aspect. Because they're so alike, there's a sense in which one can substitute for the other. A son can naturally act as his father's agent. Acting in on his behalf, in his place, with his authority. So (i) grounds (ii). Because the Son represents the Father ontologically, he's uniquely qualified to represent the Father in action. 

3. Turning to eternal generation, one asymmetry between eternal sonship and eternal generation is that the concept or metaphor of generation doesn't entail a son. Fathers beget daughters, too.  

Although generation is a male sexual metaphor in reference to the begetter, it is not a male sexual metaphor in reference to the begotten. Men father daughters as well as sons. And it would be inapt to say no one is more like a father than his daughter, pace the father/son relation. So that's one limitation of the metaphor or analogy. 

4. Unlike eternal sonship, eternal generation takes the metaphor a step further, as a theory of derivation. Eternal generation is a more radical and ambitious claim. In a sense, an attempt to explain the origin of the Trinity. On this view, the Father causes the Son and the Spirit to exist.

This is distinguished from creation in the usual sense inasmuch as they are eternally and necessarily caused to exist. Moreover, they share the Father's essence. 

Whether that's adequate to distinguish God from a creature is disputable. By that logic, the Father could be eternally and necessarily caused to exist by a super-deity who stands behind the Trinity, transmiting his essence to the Father. Indeed, the logic of the principle seems to extend backward with no stopping-point. 

Of course, some folk's ecclesiology commits them to creedal statements regarding eternal generation. I appreciate the fact that the Nicene paradigm squeezed out Arianism, but I regard eternal generation as a theological compromise or halfway house that degrades the deity of the Son and Spirit. In that respect I side with theologians like Alexander Röell, B. B. Warfield, Paul Helm, and John Frame who reject a hierarchical model of the Trinity. 

Was Jesus self-deceived?

Tentative Apologist

@RandalRauser

I had a nice exchange with @RTB_FRana but I was disappointed to learn that he holds Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. That thesis is to biblical studies as young-earth creationism is to geology. When Christian apologists endorse fringe views they weaken their credibility.

James Anderson

@proginosko

Replying to @RandalRauser @RTB_FRana

Yeah, it's so embarrassing when Christians endorse the sort of fringe views that Christ himself held!

Tentative Apologist

@RandalRauser

Tentative Apologist Retweeted James Anderson

James should try this out at the Society of Biblical Literature. That will surely put all those liberal "scholars" in their place.

Tentative Apologist

@RandalRauser

Replying to @proginosko @RTB_FRana

I suppose you also think the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds?

James Anderson

@proginosko

Replying to @RandalRauser @RTB_FRana

I think whatever Jesus affirmed about the mustard seed is true. I also think whatever Jesus affirmed about the OT scriptures he quoted is true. Moreover, I believe I have good rational justification for these beliefs, despite what the fine folk at SBL might think of me.

Tentative Apologist

@RandalRauser

Jesus said the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Matthew 13:32). So it's settled for you then?

James Anderson

@proginosko

If Jesus affirms p, I take that as decisive grounds to affirm p. Does that shock you? Of course, there's a reasonable question here about what p is in the case of Matthew 13:32. I take it that "all" is qualified by the conversational context.

1. Wow. Rauser actually trots out the mustard seed objection to inerrancy, as if that's comparable to Mosaic authorship. The mustard seed statement is proverbial or hyperbolic. It's not erroneous to use hyperbole or proverbial sayings (e.g. "a fish rots from the head down").

And it's not remotely analogous to the question of Mosaic authorship.

But this also goes to Rauser's kenotic Christology, where Jesus, as a child of his times, unwittingly taught falsehood. 

The issue is whether the target audience recognizes hyperbolic or proverbial expressions. Then analogy would then be whether the same audience recognized that Mosaic authorship was just a conventional attribution. There the comparison breaks down. 

I'm sure Rauser's real position is that 1C Palestinian Jews believed in Mosaic authorship, but modern scholars know better. 

2. While Jesus may have held false beliefs qua his human nature, that's in union with the divine nature, and in his capacity as a teacher, the divine nature would inform, correct, or censor false beliefs of the human nature/mind when it came to teaching others.

One issue is whether the divine nature would function, among other things, as a screen or quality control mechanism, to preempt Jesus from unwittingly misleading billions of Christians over the centuries. It's serious business to say Jesus was an unintentional deceiver, due to his fallibility.

But if anything, it's worse than that since on Rauser's theory, Jesus is self-deceived. If he's fallible in the way Rauser says or allows for, then he could be self-deluded about his mission, about his understanding of God, about who he himself is, about salvation and damnation. 

3. Regarding Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch:

i) If the Pentateuch was actually compiled during the Babylonian Exile, how did the entire Jewish community forget the origins of the Pentateuch? Is social memory that weak? How did Mosaic authorship ever become the unquestioned tradition in 2nd Temple Judaism?

ii) The most natural assumption is that Genesis-Chronicles are written in chronological order. It's a continuous history, so you'd expect books recounting later events to be written later than books recounting earlier events. But if the Pentateuch was compiled during the Babylonian Exile, then doesn't that push the composition of the other books into the Intertestamental period? It really bunches up, like a log jam.

iii) What were pre-exilic prophets talking about when they indict Israel as covenant-breakers and threaten the curse sanctions of Deuteronomy if, in fact, the Pentateuch was compiled after the fact?

iv) If the Pentateuch is pious fiction, why say the Israelites are carpetbaggers who invaded Palestine from Egypt, and ultimately go back to a progenitor from Babylon? Why not just make the Israelites indigenous to Palestine? 

v) For that matter, if the Pentateuch and Historical Books were really written during the empires of neo-Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Alexander, and Republican Rome, why people them Canaanite adversaries?

Parsing the Incarnation

A comment left on my EO post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/01/why-im-not-eastern-orthodox.html

I think you need to strengthen your notion of hypostatic union.

I wasn't offering a detailed view of my position. I've explicated my position in other posts. 

1. The humanity that the Logos took from Mary is a real and perfect humanity.

i) Humanity includes both body and soul. He did receive his soul from Mary?

ii) No doubt his humanity is real. I'm not sure what is meant by "perfect". Does that mean morally perfect? If so, yes. 

Does that mean Jesus had to have 20/20 vision? No. His humanity could be "imperfect" in the sense of, say, having a congenital heart defect, or allergies. He didn't need to be a specimen of physical perfection. 

2. The whole point of the incarnation is HE who is God has truly become Immanuel- God with us as man.

Is that the whole point? That's not even the primary point. The Incarnation was a necessary condition for him to make penal substitution for the elect. A means to an end. 

3. For HE to be truly man, he must truly make his own that humanity that is common to the elect.

i) True, but it may be worth expatiating on that point. A standard way of putting it is that human beings share a common nature. Every human being is a property instance or exemplification of human nature.

ii) Another way of putting it is that God has a constitutive idea of what makes humans human, as well as a constitutive idea for unique individual. God creates individual human beings according to his complete idea for each, with its distinctiveness as well as commonality. 

iii) When, however, the Son assumes or unites himself to a concrete human nature, that doesn't have a domino effect on other human beings. It's a self-contained instance, separate from other human beings. The Incarnation doesn't transmit something to human beings in general. He is related to other human beings at a natural level, but he assumes a particularized nature. The action doesn't change other human beings, as if the Incarnation is a circuit which relays a current to human beings generally. 

4. Therefore, the Logos neither displaces the human mind of Christ (Apollinarianism) nor is he separated from the mind of Christ (Nestorianism). Rather- The Logos, the second person of the trinity, has taken and made, as HIS OWN a full and complete humanity. So the flesh of Christ is the flesh of the Logos. The soul of Christ is the soul of the Logos. The mind of Christ is the mind of the Logos- not in a fusion of mixing, but in a unity of person. “The Logos became flesh.” 

i) As a matter of terminology, I prefer in this context to say the "Son" rather than the "Logos"–inasmuch as the Logos is an economic term for the Son in his contingent role as the Creator of the world, whereas the Son is a divine title, connoting his eternal, ontological identity.

Since, moreover, I don't think the Son and Spirit derive their existence from the Father, I avoid the "first/second/third person(s)" of the Trinity rubric. I side with the Trinitarian paradigm of theologians like Warfield, Frame, and Helm. 

ii) If the word "flesh" comes from Jn 1:14, then we need to define it in Johannine terms. 

iii) "Person" or hypostasis is a term of art in Cyrillian Christology. 

iv) I don't know what is intended by statements like "the mind of Christ is the mind of the Logos". Is that an allusion to the an/enhypostatic union? But that raises familar questions about whether such a nature is a defective, incomplete human nature. To be truly human, Jesus must have a rational human soul. 

5. Therefore, the human mind of Christ always had the infused vision of his divinity- the divinity proper to the Logos.

It's not a two-way conduit. The human mind doesn't have access to the divine mind unless the divine mind shares something with the human mind. 

Of course, from the time his human mind was old enough to understand, Jesus knew he was God Incarnate. There's a dual-consciousness, and the individual was aware of his complex identity, even in his human consciousness. 

6. If the Logos can hold two natures in connection, but not union- then the he who died on the cross cannot save us- for he dies solely as man, not God-made-man, and he rises solely as God, nor God-made-man.

I never said it was a connection rather than a union. Mind you, "union" is a just a generic, neutral verbal placeholder. It doesn't do much theological work. That depends, not on a particular word, but a philosophical model. 

7. Therefore, for the sake of the elect, it is necessary to proclaim that Immanuel is truly God, having made his OWN that humanity conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary from the first instant of its conception.

"His own" in the sense of a unique property instance of human nature uniquely and permanently coupled with the divine Son. 

You’re perilously close to Paul of Samosata and Nestorius. Tread carefully. 

There's nothing adoptionist about my position. The human nature of Christ only exists in virtue of the Incarnation. As for modalism, unitarian philosopher Dale Tuggy accuses me of Tritheism (on his tendentious characterization). "Nestorian" is a term of abuse rarely defined with precision, and routinely used as a lazy intellectual shortcut. In other posts I've provided models to illustrate the asymmetrical relation between the divine and human natures. 

My primary frame of reference is NT Christology. Beyond that we're left with philosophical theology. I'm not obliged to confine myself to the conceptual resources of Cyril of Alexandria. The ongoing history of ideas has provided us with additional analogies we can use to refine Christology. It's necessary to do full justice to what the NT says about the person of Christ. If that generates some tensions with Cyrillian Christology, so be it.