Jewish Roots of the Trinity update

While on holiday I was struck by a visual experience that I felt illustrated powerfully two suggestions this blog has made and is making now, but it caused me to look back at a post I made on 8 May 2017, when I wrote a post that would become one of my more significant and most visited posts: Jewish Roots of the Trinity. I even translated it into French. But I realised as I re-read it that it needed updating, which is what I have now done. I haven't touched the explanation, which I still feel is accurate and is reflecting my longer-term historical perspective on the development of a Triune-God theology. However, the bullets I wrote were not as clear as I had hoped and mingled the various Christian mutations of the Jewish worldview in a way I now found confusing.

The bullets still remain theologically dense - but now I am sitting the Triune Hub idea on three clearer Christian mutations, explorable by work clustered around N. T. Wright for the first mutation on resurrection, Larry Hurtado for the second on Jesus-worship and Dominic Crossan for the third on the Spirit-empowering participative kingdom.

If you can't be bothered to read the changes there, here they are in there (I hope) clearer form, first in English, then in French:

The first-century mutation, the Triune Hub, is making Jewish sense of:

• the Jesus events: death, postmortem encounters and enthronement visions mean the resurrection of God's Messiah and Son, physically absent but envisioned exalted and reigning at a cosmic level: at God's right hand.
• This super-exalted raised Messiah is also a clear instruction to worship God's annointed and continue to "follow" him.
• the unforeseeably early resurrection of Jesus winds the eschatological clock forward and prepares a new eschatological window: outpouring of the Holy Spirit, empowering God's people to advance the inevitably victorious kingdom foreshadowed by Christ's victory over death and evil during the Easter-Passover weekend.

La mutation du premier siècle, Le Moyeux Trinitaire, fait sens pour un juif chrétien de :

• Les évènements de Jésus : mort, rencontres post-mortem et visions d'intronisation doivent signifier la résurrection du Messie et Fils de Dieu, physiquement absent mais perçu en vision comme exalté et comme ayant reçu une autorité ultime et cosmique: à la droite de Dieu.
• Ce Messie "super-exalté" signifie clairement l'instruction divine de louer l'Oint de Dieu et de continuer à le "suivre".
• Cette résurrection précoce et imrévisible de Jésus avance le programme eschatologique et prépare une reconfiguration des propheties des dernniers temps: l'effusion eschatologique de l'Esprit Saint, habilitant Le Peuple de Dieu par le symbole du baptême, d’avancer l’inévitable Royaume victorieux anticipé par la victoire du Christ sur la mort et le mal pendant le week-end de Pâque.

By the way, I took the time to photograph this experience and have begun drafting the post to share with you soon!

John’s third impacting figure: Dr Dale Tuggy

Fatscript Episode 7 show notes, John’s third impacting figure: Dr Dale Tuggy

• ·        Onscript: http://onscript.study/

·        (Pennington interview http://onscript.study/podcast/jonathan-pennington-the-sermon-on-the-mount-and-human-flourishing/)

• ·        My book chapter is out! Check it out here: https://www.academia.edu/34726445/Trinitarian_Interpretation_Mutated_Faith_and_the_Triune_Hub_Re-examining_the_Foundations_Chapter_1_
• ·        Mark Gooadcre video on John’s relationship to the synoptics: http://www.christianorigins.div.ed.ac.uk/2017/10/23/johnandthesynoptics/
• ·        My first public interaction with Dr Dale Tuggy on his listeners’ questions show: http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-90-listener-questions-1/
• ·        My main interactions with Dale

1.      Dale’s post: http://trinities.org/blog/dialogue-with-john-on-thinking-about-the-trinity/

2.      John’s response: http://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/2017/07/responding-to-dale-tuggy-on-trinitarian.html

• ·        Please give us a rating! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fatscript-podcast/id1217930034?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Big T Little t: It's time to call in the A-Team!

Remember The A Team? What a great show!

One of the great characters from that 90s classic was Mister T. You don't mess with Mister T!
Today I want to reflect again on Tuggy's dichotomy between little-t big-T, which continues to bug me. I have already blogged on the Jewish Roots of the Trinity and especially in my Responding to Dale Tuggy on Trinitarian Conceptualisation. Dale's amazing at showing distinction where there appears to be just mud. He's a trained analytic philosopher, he's just doing his job and doing it well. But there are problems in applying dichotomies across time and culture, especially with regards to this multi-personal God issue that has provoked so much inquiry in his own life and also in my own.

I've hinted at this before, but I'm going to emphasise it again now. Biblical Unitarians - to whom I owe so much and whom I love, at least those that I have had the privilege of meeting - are fully capable of accepting quite unaware the very fourth-century categories they so firmly oppose. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. Not so long ago, I blogged quite a successful blog summary (What On Earth Has John Been Up To?) in which I included some of my next goals (one of those was a study on John the Baptist, which is already completed, hurrah). Believe it or not, my intuition about the Restitutio interview seems to have been pretty well dialled in - presenter Pastor Sean Finnegan read my blog summary hyperlinked above and has expressed interest in doing an interview. So, that plug aside (watch this space!), my point is that in preparing to speak to Sean I looked up a debate he did on Youtube way back in 2008ish, up against a Trinitarian. I didn't make it all the way through. It was the sort of debate that just makes you think how do those people even think that fast?! One sentence caught my attention, however, where Sean said something along the lines of: "no, I do not believe that Jesus is of the same essence as the Father". The same essence?

I should be careful here! Sean, you might even be reading this, so in maximum warp-speed 10 respect, please hear me right. I'm just trying to point out that it is very easy for any of us to take our opponents' categories for granted. Perhaps Sean wouldn't say that nine years later, either way, it doesn't matter for the purpose of this example. Back to Small T vs Big T.

Dale Tuggy's point is that "small-t" trinitarian refers to a triad. All "small-t" trinitarians are in fact, according to Dale's tightly defined definitions, biblical Unitarians. That is to say that God himself, remains one individual, no matter how much he and his actions are bound to his Son and his Spirit. Over the past year or so, I have come from a point of curiosity, through scepticism now to rejection on the possibility of some almighty conceptual switch. As I have understood the dichotomy thus far, the radical switch from Point A (God Is A Single Person Deity) to Point C (God Is A Three-Person Deity) shift is too great. As I stressed in my response to Dale, to which his response is still due at some point I hope, there has to be a Point B. That Point B is not adequately described as "biblical Unitarian". I'm sorry, but I find that almost as guilty as the back-projecting as some Trinitarians are in their own apologetics.

In my view, the whole perspective is upside down. It wants to start with ontology, which is precisely where Paul Ricoeur has warned us not to begin. If we begin there and disregard the goals, loyalties, injuries, politics, history and other stakes then we can miss important data - this data is so much more complex and nuanced its complexity and nuance require a more hermeneutic approach. It is this hermeneutic approach that says: how do we perceive? How do we conceptualise the seen realm and the unseen realm? If we do that, and we are able to factor in the historical probability of the first-century Christian mutation of Judaism having started to vocalise, ritualise and (although they did not know it) immortalise its "Triune Hub" via the baptismal rites, then we are released into realising that it is, in fact, the Triune God version of the Trinity that should receive the "small T", since it is interpretative of that which precedes it. It is, therefore, the earlier, Jewish-Christian expression and understanding from which it is developed is that which should truly bear the "Mister T" belt.

According to my own definitions, then, I think that makes me a Capital-T Trinitarian! It might frustrate, however, to realise that it is not in any way an outcome of a one-self or three-self decoding process of the ontology of God, since it begins with the social human psyche.

Responding to Dale Tuggy on Trinitarian Conceptualisation

AS WITH DR. Hurtado, now with Dr. Tuggy, I have received the honour of some recognition and interaction over the ideas contained in their respective fields and work. Some may have already read my response to Dale's new book, What Is The Trinity: Thinking About The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which you can of course still consult here. In fact, I would recommend doing so first and then reading Dale's response to me on his blog in order to make fuller sense of today's post.

Let's get to it!

I think I stand corrected on an important point: small-t big-T usage with the word "Trinity". I may still not quite be on the money here, but if I understand correctly, Dale is not attempting to establish some new literary practice that he came up with, rather he has seen it and wants to encourage that usage. Be that as it may, I stand by the "inoperable" assessment. If the distinction can only be made by writing the word down, then how useful and practical is it to have to say "small-t trinity"? What percentage of people are aware of this practice anyway? Finally, how practical is it when both capitalised and non-capitalised versions are not capitalised in the adjectival form, and how exactly do we go about that anyway? This creates some issues when laid out, and I think we should ask Dale which he thinks is true:

1.

 2.

If the answer is 1 (whether someone believes in the Trinity or the trinity, both are "trinitarian"), then not only is the distinction difficult being reliant on a small written difference in the noun form, but once an adjective, even that small written difference is swallowed up. If the answer is 2. (someone who believes in the Trinity is "trinitarian"; someone who believes in the trinity is "unitarian"), then we still have a most peculiar rule set, whereby small-t means one (very significant) distinction in the noun form, but another quite different (simply grammatical) distinction in the adjectival form.

If the answer is both 1 and 2, then further rules (senses) seem necessary in order to prevent a contradiction. Altogether, I believe this is actually quite a complicated state of affairs indeed, and is what I meant by my assessment of inoperable.

Moving on to my criticism of insufficient definition of quite what small-t trinity actually is. Dale responds, John, you’re overreacting to the word “just” here.  In that context the purpose of it is just to let us know that the members of this triad are not necessarily parts that compose some whole, or aspects of some one thing, or even things of the same exact physical status. It is not a comment on the importance of the triad or any member in it.  The thing is, the triad might also be a Trinity.

This is very interesting. Actually, as I mentioned in my initial post, I don't perceive Dale's small-t usage as referencing something small or lesser. In the same way he sees me, according to his definitions, as unitarian, I am beginning to see him, according to my definitions as trinitarian. One of our key differences, I think, is that the model I am trying to develop does not start with the ontology of God - it's conceptual. In my post yesterday I translated some important philosophical contributions made by Paul Ricoeur, because I am particularly interested in the unstated meanings of the institutionalising 4th-century and later Church. We tend to focus on the grand ontological deliberations and damning anathemas. When the church said that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were of one substance, three Persons in One God, the question is not only what could that mean in the apparent, ontological comprehensive sense, but what else did she mean, in the fuller interpretative sense? What were her concerns, her worries, her goals, her injuries, her loyalties, her priorities? How did "she" interpret the biblical texts to join her horizon with the horizons of the New (and Old) Testament texts? (I have already shared how insightful I find the Sirmium II Council to be into this question in my post Hermeneutic Circle and Asking Better Why Questions).

It's a terrible thing, perhaps, to say, but I actually have found it helpful to put my own beliefs to one side on this. To adopt my own rough model for the emergence of the Triune God (I'm quite enjoying testing the word "triunification" of God) requires no personal faith in Christianity whatsoever. It might help for you to care enough to think about it (let's remember what a tiny minority we are to find this so "crucial"). But an interested atheist or agnostic historian can come to this data and will naturally want to ask the kinds of questions I just stated. How did "substance" help articulate and preserve the collective beliefs and practices of the Church at the time, even if it is entirely symbolic (e.g. zero gods)? My approach is thus to say that this substantialization process is a symbolic hermeneutic that can only mean one thing: they were looking for a way to ground the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the centre in a way that they already were functioning in practice. Dale - I firmly believe history needs more continuity than the 381 eureka! moment/scenario your model seems to require, because as you say, the triad might also be a Trinity (even if we mean this in slightly different ways).

I find it slightly curious that my usage of the word "mutation" is not more meaningful to Dale. It is the go-to word for some scholars like Crossan, NT Wright and Hurtado (the last of whom has been interviewed on four occasions on the trinities podcast, here, here, here and here) to express the modifications of religious belief structures that would permit Jews to still be Jews but also a part of the new Christian movement. I've looked in detail at how each of the aforementioned scholars use the term and feel ready to borrow its usage while still critiquing some inconsistency in its use (esp. Wright). So I think I can be considered clear of simple or unthought idea-grabbing on this point. While I teetered on the edge of embracing biblical unitarianism in 2015, it was (geekily enough) recognising that unitarian scepticism around the textual soundness of Matthew 28:19 was so weakly based, especially when I had to concede the baptismal formula in the Didache, some quite ambivalent personal views I have on the gospel of Matthew (love, hate and late), that made me start to question whether or not a form of trinitarianism did indeed actually spring up as early as the first century. I actually believe it did and I can provide some good arguments to back that up and the fourth-century picture is part of that explanation.

On Tuggy's response to my response to Q5, about "absolute equality", the issue of mutation rears its head again. Tuggy points out that prior to the Christ-event, Daniel 7 provides a precedent: "But to the Jews they were not absolutely unassignable"..."that all sounds like God stuff! It is! It is from him". One of the mutations that Tom Wright highlights about resurrection in Judaism and resurrection in Christianity, is that it (resurrection) has shifted from being a marginal belief to something at the centre - he specifically identifies this relocation as a "mutation". Daniel 7 is a pretty awesome text, but, as with bodily resurrection, it does not seem to have captured messianic hopes in mainstream pharisaic Judaism, which is what Dale's comments could be construed to imply. It is unclear to me even if we can be sure that Jesus or his disciples would have had access to that particular text, although I am inclined to think that they may well have had access to the Parables of Enoch (and possibly Daniel). Larry Hurtado is much more sceptical on this point even than me: zero precedent for this kind of Jewish cultus of Christ. I would point out, however, even if this were a mainstream hope, which it most certainly does not appear to be, it would be one thing to hope for such a figure in the future and quite another to believe that this one like a Son of Man had indeed come as the Messiah and God now required that worship of him be carried out in a way only anticipated beforehand and otherwise reserved for him alone.

Dale's response to the centrality of Jesus and the Spirit is still engaging with the issue from a different standpoint - he can agree on centrality, without any modification to the theology, by which he means the unity of the one God although allowing for modification of the messianic category. But when you examine the issue historically, seeing each set of religious thinkers as interpreters of those before them, then the only way you can get from Point A (monotheistic unipersonal God) to Point C (monotheistic tripersonal God) is via a Point B. There has to be a point B - no, indeed God is not yet triune, but something has changed via his exaltation of Christ and the participative rule empowered by God's sent Spirit. This is something we can identify as a historical religious phenomenon of reconfiguration. As an atheist, agnostic, trinitarian, Trinitarian (oops, sorry ;)), Unitarian, Buddhist, Muslim or whatever your personal faith, none of that matters on this point. You can't teleport Christianity from Point A to Point C, and that Point B simply has to have something to do with the substantial changes and mutations Christianity has been firmly recognised to have brought from within its Jewish contingent. Could it not be that fourth-century ousia is symbolic for religious centrality? Reconfigured divine space? Again, I don't mean real divine space! I refer to the psychological, conceptual and, I believe it is the correct word having looked a little into Ricoeur's work now, phenomenological space hitherto accorded to Yahweh alone.

On the divine logos category, Dale asserts correctly: " It seems to me that he’s really using Jewish categories". I think I get his point, Jewish usage of this "through whom" business in the New Testament is natural and certainly precedes John, who simply clarifies it a bit more than Paul, for instance. It is worth remembering that a lot of Jews at the time may not have known much Hebrew or Aramaic - this was one of the reasons driving the third century BC translation of the Septuagint in Alexandria into Greek. It should still be considered remarkable that these "through whom"s were so readily applied to Jesus so quickly. The Jewish Christians were "primed".

Q6 is really about worship of the Holy Spirit. It is interesting here to note that Tuggy seems to side with Hurtado on this one. Hurtado points consistently to what he calls a "binitarian worship" practice among the earliest Christians. That's distinctly one less than three - however, if pushed to Tuggy's standard of "primary trinitarianism", Hurtado's binitarian usage would fail (Hurtado is not claiming that God himself is binitarian in the first century, it is the act of worship that it binitarian, see my post on this point here: Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 9: what does Hurtado mean by "binitarian"). My argument, however, contra Hurtado, is that since religious experience would have been best understood by the central revolutionary empowering presence of God of his Spirit, that God is now more firmly located next to his Son in heaven and other distinguishing aspects I will be laying out in my presentation of the forces and factors determining the first century triune hub emergence. Although founded on some traditional creedal authorities, it would be an assumption I think for many evangelical Christians to suppose they worship the Spirit, also calling "him", "Lord". The point here is that contrary to Dale's insistence that the Trinitarians have got it wrong on this one, most evangelical trinitarian practice I know of simply agrees with the New Testament practice Hurtado calls "binitarian" (provided they haven't subsumed the Father into Christ). On over-personification of the Holy Spirit, Dale should remember I share the same reservations, and I still stand by most of what I wrote that he published on his blog, demanding more evidence from social trinitarians of the Holy Spirit as a giver and receiver of love among the other Members.

Dale closes this point stating that he has never heard of nor seen New Testament evidence for a Triune Hub, such as I suppose, and that this idea lacks clarity for him. I take his challenge very seriously - I need to be ready to give a clear presentation of my thesis, and I am pondering doing a youtube video, while at the same time shuddering at my lack of skills in that area. Some followers of the blog will know that I have also made some approaches to book publishers with the idea, which has improved with each submission. Thus far I have tried Wipf & Stock (rejected), Austin Macauley (accepted, but I'd prefer a specialised publisher), SPCK (rejected, although some apparent interest) and now Paternoster (currently under review). If you would like to contact Paternoster to encourage them to take on my project, then please write to Authentic Media Submissions at submissions[at]authenticmedia.co.uk regarding John Bainbridge's book proposal - thanks! Of course, I can also send you what I wrote to them beforehand.

On the concept of the hub itself, I have tried on numerous occasions to summarise it into a sentence or two, so I guess I could have another go now. The model is a semantic one, it wants to look at how Jews, then Christian Jews and then later Christians could triunify God. It understands and accepts that as neurotheological research has pointed out, the human brain's association with the religious world is actually interconnected. Neurotheology recognises that there is neither a "God Gene" nor a brain "God spot". We are wired to explain a world in which establishing and influencing causality enhances our chances of survival. All cultures have developed with religious beliefs and practices, some establishing a plurality of divine beings, some with one above the rest and others with exactly one, like Islam. I'm not yet completely convinced that the Christian mutation occurred at a time in Jewish history when henotheism (multiple gods, but one above them all) was not the more accurate or representative worldview for them. The semantics and practices around the gods or god of religions are detailed and change over time, although are usually constrained for the more stable religions to ensure continuity with and preservation of sacred revelations of the past. The concept of God, however, shifted astoundingly quickly according to Hurtado. No longer was there God and his emissaries, but now, following the sudden events around the first Easter, is his Messiah forever reigning at his right hand, whom he commands be worshipped.

Such divine reverence, Hurtado argues compellingly, was reserved for Yahweh alone... until now!

"Inasmuch as exclusivist monotheism is manifested essentially...in a refusal to offer worship to any figure other than the one God". (LJC Ch. 1). Furthermore: [W]e have no analogous accommodation of a second figure along with God as recipient of such devotion in the Jewish tradition of the time, making it very difficult to fit this inclusion of Christ as recipient of devotion into any known devotional pattern attested among Jewish groups of the Roman period. [KL 919, my emphasis], see also my post on Hurtado, "Part 8: the line no-one ever crossed"). The point is that for these Jesus-worshipping Jews, their religious concepts were in a state of flux. Certain rules no longer applied. Some of these were about worship. Others were about a single-stage eschatology. Others were about resurrection. Others were about the participative (as opposed to interventionist) nature of the Kingdom of God. Others were about the temple. All of this was in sudden movement as God started to play some cards that he had previously only hinted he held. The result was Jesus-worship to the glory of God the Father in the Holy Spirit; in fact, the "proto-orthodox" church saw it their duty to sustain these revealed modifications, a process which began before the close of the New Testament canon. Matthew, for instance, one of the most Jewish books of the New Testament canon, is responding to some confusion over baptism as he has witnessed not least in reading Acts 8:14-25 and 18:24-19:8, and ensures that baptism "into Jesus" is absolutely about receiving the Holy Spirit by placing this on the authority of Jesus' own lips post resurrection. All the major acts of God begin to be reconfigured around the Father, Son and Spirit (see this Stephen Holmes video for a clearly articulated argument on this, especially the Q&A at the end).

Prior to Jesus, Yahweh filled that religious centre in the Jewish mind. It was slightly blurrily edged at times, but worship seems to be the big dividing line in the Jewish mind. I slightly prefer "hub" to centre, because you can have a static centre or core, like a building, but a hub is dynamic. It turns and interacts with its surrounding elements. That semantic hub looks different now. That's more than a couple of sentences, but I'm just trying to be clear and yet still not extend into the chapter-length necessary to deal with this new angle.

On Q. 7 about persons, Dales asks: What difference does it make if we go on to talk about this, “hub” thing? In what way are you trying to tweak either a humanitarian or a subordinationist unitarian theology? I am trying to understand how it is possible to end up with a Triune God from the New Testament conceptually, even symbolically. The clearest example we have of the paradox I discovered listening to your podcast episode 177 on the Second Sirmian Creed. The paradox, if I follow Ricoeur's encouragement to decode deeper meaning, is that the precious Trinity is both to be preserved forever, while One (the Father) is greater than the others. I believe that for a stabilising institution, this made for a lopsided and unstable Trinity. What is greatness? Might it not be religious centricity? If "all are central, but one is more central than the others", then we find ourselves in Orwell's paradoxical Animal Farm...

On my two additional comments, Dale seems to concede my point, without explicitly going back on his language in his book of the Holy Spirit's mention in 325 being an "afterthought".

On the second point about risking going around misleading people about my love for the Trinity (i.e. articulating my own spiritual life and purpose around the F, S & HS), I feel no shame nor risk. On the contrary, I believe most people need a simpler emphasis on all three (my 7-year-old was delighted to discover that there were "3 of them"! even though he does not yet need to ask quite what "them" means, and God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit remain distinct for him, or at least I hope). Most people haven't ever heard the word "Triune" before. I'd been a Christian for over a decade and only doing a Bible course to consolidate my faith and knowledge of Scripture at age 21 do I remember hearing it for the first time. In practice, I hardly ever use the word Trinity, but I simply emphasise and articulate my faith in as threefold a manner as I know how and feel remarkably safe there.

Very nearly there...

Dale says: I have the impression that you’re groping for a sort of middle ground between unitarianism and trinitarianism. I don’t see why we need that though. Queue: Paul Ricoeur. Rarely known fact: this influential Christian philosopher actually helped train French President Emmanuel Macron. The book chapter I have been doing some posts on over the last couple of days has a lot to do with arbitration, the title of the book is aptly named The Conflict of Interpretations. Having examined both sides of this trinitarian debate in some depth, I can safely say that both positions have strong points. I don't care much for "groping" - but I am indeed scoping out ways in which dialogue between these two sets of perspectives can lead to a more harmonious reading of the texts. Here's a very small example, one that set my religious foundations into a state of dangerous tremor when I began to see it just three years ago: just look at all those simple "and"s between God and Jesus. This is not a complicated "and", say the Unitarians. And they are right, but that position gets tricky when that same simple "and" (along with other sharp distinguishing linguistic features) comes between the Father and the Spirit.

Finally, Dale closes with: Before, you’ve expressed incredulity at the idea that mainstream Christianity could go from a unipersonal God to a tripersonal one, in the 4th c. I agree that at first glance, this is a big surprise. But I think I sort of see how it went, in the minds of some of the speculators whose views prevailed. At least, I’m starting to. Long story, though. Yes it is! I think that is my point - it has to be a lot longer than is sometimes implied. And it is also the key story that we are all dying to hear and that I haven't yet heard told satisfactorily. Looking forward very much to hearing more of what you have started to see :)

What a fascinating exchange! Thanks so much Dale, I have really appreciated it, and for making me think so very hard about this issue.

What Is The Trinity? A brief response to Dale Tuggy's recent book

WHAT IS THE TRINITY? A central question indeed to which author Dale Tuggy has an answer that leads the open reader dissatisfied with current explanations.

(Since I wrote this post, Dale Tuggy has responded to it over on his blog, Dialogue with John on Thinking about the Trinity, to which I now have an extended response: Responding to Dale Tuggy on Trinitarian Conceptualisation)

I liked the book - that was always probable as I have supported the trinities show for a couple of years and Tuggy's own views have been important in shaping my own, which are nonetheless distinct now from his. I liked it for Tuggy's systematic approach into an issue that for some may have always appeared impenetrable, for the author's ruthless efforts at showing where he sees inconsistencies to lie, for his deep respect for some Trinitarian theologians and philosophers and for what still appears to me to be a genuine search for Truth. Even if Tuggy's place within the Biblical Unitarian camp is now well established and appreciated by them, he is not playing to them.

As I began to read it, I was surprised by a few typos, including on the back cover and early on. But readers shouldn't be put off by those - this is not a slap-dash book, and those seem to disappear as you get further in.

Readers should remember that Tuggy is a philosopher, so at times, although he has deliberately aimed this short book at a wider audience, reference is made to philosophical and logical constructions that not everyone will be immediately familiar with. The examples he gives to illustrate his points often include that dry wit that many of us also appreciate in Dr. Tuggy.

Today, it is not my goal at all to engage with the book in depth - there are other ongoing projects as regular blog readers are aware - I will just take the opportunity to respond to Tuggy's takeaway questions, that can be found on p. 133-134, which might illustrate nicely where our common and uncommon ground lies, and then two other comments.

1. Does the New Testament in any sense appeal to "mystery" about the Trinity or the trinity? If so, what is meant by "mystery" there?
No it doesn't, although I now disagree that the Trinity/trinity distinction is operable in that format. The clearest example of mystery in the New Testament to my mind is the inclusion of the Gentiles into God's people.

2. Does the New Testament anywhere mention or refer to a Trinity, or only to a trinity? Neither, if we are on explicit criteria. If we are on the implicit side and we accept that Trinity = The Tri-personal God alone, then God is certainly not referred to with that idea in mind. However, Tuggy does not integrate the significance of what he calls small-t trinity in sufficient depth. At another point in the book (sorry I'm going for a speedy post today, so no page reference) he refers to this trinity as "just a triad". Don't focus on the word "triad", when he says this. Focus on "just" and "a". In my view, that is a wholly inadequate description of the way in which the Jewish-Christian religious semantics underwent a profound reorganisation ("mutation") through a relatively short number of decades including the divine core itself, which I refer to as the "hub". I want to keep these answers short so I won't say more on that here, but there are quite a few other posts on this if you look back through my archive.

3. Does it teach that there are three eternal equally divine Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who all together in some sense "are" the one God, Yahweh?
No.

4. Does it teach that those three Persons share an ousia, and if so, what would the New Testament authors, in their first-century context, mean by that saying that?
This is a difficult question, perhaps a bit like to use the author's own analogy of wondering what someone from centuries past might have thought of the Internet. Having said that, it is true that Aristotelian ideas of substance, form and matter would have been known to some of the earlier educated Greek converts, although I don't know how well grounded in those Paul would have been. Interestingly, ousia, or substance, does not appear to be the foundational aspect of a thing. In the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (in which Tuggy is also published, unsurprisingly enough on the Trinity), there is an entry under "Form vs. Matter". Here it states: "In these cases, the thing that underlies is the matter of the substance". The substance itself is not the permanent underlier. So the question Tuggy wants to ask of a first-century Christian, assuming he is versed in Greek philosophy is doubly inconceivable since the word ousia does not seem to mean at that point in history what the church would later graft it in to mean and indeed even later adapt (into something eternal).

5. Does it teach the absolute equality of the Father, Son, and Spirit, so that each is eternally unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness? No, but there are some important things to note in conditioning this response. Firstly "absolute equality". We all know that, awkwardly for some, Jesus goes on the record as saying that "the Father is greater than I", so at least in essential greatness, it is very difficult to go back on Jesus' own words. How do some Christians do that? Well, the passage in Philippians 2 (which is certainly not ignored in this book) may include part of the answer. The idea is that the full worship and glory can be directed at Christ "to the glory of God the Father". One of the key building blocks to the "meta-mutation" of the Triune hub is the recognition of the unforeseeable incorporation of the Messiah into the sphere or individuals worthy of worship, as explained in detail by Larry Hurtado (see my summary post here for a good access point into my series). Hitherto, that space was occupied fully by Yahweh. Jesus receives "all authority". From a New Testament standpoint, the Father's presence and anointing in his son were quickly proven supreme, such that many of these hitherto presumed unassignable qualities of God were indeed shared with the one whose own (essential, I would say) humility was of equal match. If you can be as geeky as I am then you may have already tried doing some New Testament word-counts. I have done this on references to God and Jesus. They both number at around 1200. That's pretty astounding and points to a roughly shared centrality in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit does not fare so well on that criterion although is central on other criteria. Again space here limits me on this, but the primary distinctive that was necessary to make between John the Baptist and Jesus were on the central issue of the Holy Spirit - whose distinction from the Father was an outworking of the going of Christ to "be with the Father" (at his right hand).

On eternality (man, Tuggy's question is dense!), then the New Testament is significant on one understated point. On awareness and influence of Greek ideas (see also question 4), insufficient work has been done on first-century logos incorporation into Christian discourse. The way in which Jewish writers Paul and his followers (some of whom also wrote epistles), the writer of Hebrews and later, John simply assume the agency role of the logos in creation and sustenance of the universe. This can only mean that that which we have fortunately preserved in detail in the writings of Philo likely knew much wider Jewish acceptance than simply one Alexandrian writer. There has to have been something that Jesus said or was ascribed to him early on for him to "transgress" purely human messianic categories and fit so neatly within this adopted Greek one. The parables of Enoch are a likely part of the answer to this pre-Christ, Jewish-Greek convergence that justify the offhand New Testament references. On the Parables, may I recommend Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of the Parables, by Gabriele Boccaccini (2007), especially Part 6: "THE DATING", and the chapter by J.H. Charlesworth "Can we discern the composition date of the Parables of Enoch?" pp. 450-468.

6. Does the New Testament teach or positively portray the religious worship of: Father? Yes. Son? Yes. Spirit? Not "of", but "in". Does it teach or show worship of the three of them together, worship of the triune God as such? There is no Triune God yet - although the New Testament describes a reconfigured hub of the Jewish faith hitherto occupied in its entirety by Yahweh.

7. Does the New Testament teach that the only god just is the Father himself or does it teach that the Father is but one of three Persons "in" God? The former, although see my other comments above about the reconfigured monotheistic space/hub.

8. Does the New Testament make catholic bishops the successors of the apostles, with apostle-level authority to settle questions of Christian doctrine, working together in official, emperor-convened councils? As the reader now knows, this describes a scenario much later than the New Testament one. Slightly curious question.

Besides this, there is a lot to commend in this book, whose structure in particular has been thought through carefully with some excellent chapter titles! I am in agreement with a fair bit of the presentation and despite having been exposed to a lot of Tuggy's work already still learned some important things. A lot of this book is not an attempt at promoting (while not hiding) the particular views of the author. I will, however, before signing-off, highlight two assumptions that I do not feel are good characterisations of the historical data, that may also be where the personal views do interact with the analysis of the data.

Firstly, p. 89, the chapter is wittily entitled "Substance Abuse" and concerns the fourth-century controversies. In the Nicene Creed, it can seem striking that so little is said about the Holy Spirit, but look at Tuggy's assumption:

The 325 Creed ends with the seeming afterthought: "and in the Holy Spirit". (p. 89)

Especially in light of his comments elsewhere about the nature of the 325 Creed (its focus is refuting Arianism), it was not attempting to be some kind of eternal declaration that would shape core Christian belief for millennia. Rather, it was clearing up an Arian controversy that messed with Jesus' divine status. If Arians were not perceived to contravene the catholic interpretation of the Holy Spirit to the same degree, then it might seem sufficient to provide a simple mention on this occasion. Meanwhile, the more Trinitarian Creed of 381 can fill this out, without necessarily be seen to "correct" it. We should remember that since the end of the first century, Christians felt it necessary to specify that baptism into the faith was in the name of Father, Son and Spirit. In many ways, I believe that the debates from third to fourth-century act as a mirror to some of the earlier first-century developments, both culminating in a triune result. The first was a Triune Hub of Jewish-Christianity, the second was a Triune God.

My second comment follows on from this and a general disagreement about the distinction method (Trinity vs. trinity) described in chapter 3, over which I was lucky to have some dialogue with Dr. Tuggy. I'll mention that in a second, but first the text of p. 113: What sort of being is "God" supposed to be? Your answer to this will constrain your options when it comes to thinking about the Trinity. The "Trinity" (in the primary sense of the term, as saw in chapter 3) is supposed to be none other than the triune God...". (p. 113, my emphasis).

In Dale's lovely understated tone, I can respond: "Nope". The use of the word "primary" here is, I believe, quite misleading. Although I still haven't gotten round to Robert Jenson's The Triune God, I do value his and Fred Sander's distinctions of a "primary" from a "secondary" (only explicitly so with Sanders) trinitarianism. So, no, I don't think we can simply accept that there is only one form of trinitarianism, which is precisely why Tuggy's blog and podcast is called trinities. He might point out that this is a reflection that the "Triune-God" presentations are multiple and contradictory in important places (to which I'd agree), but that still doesn't make that whole tier the primary form - in fact, it divorces them from it. The Triune God is phase 2 of an insufficiently detailed mutation of the religious core of Jewish faith and practice among Christians in the first century. It is thus the secondary (or even later) sense, not the primary.

Regarding my exchange with Tuggy, since it was semi-public on the trinities facebook group, I feel I can show it again here:

JB: Enjoying what must be one of the first copies of What Is the Trinity to reach French shores, by a certain Dale Tuggy. On Chapter 3: Trinity vs. trinity: Why attempt the distinction this way? Why not reclaim an earlier understanding of a mutated Jewish 3-fold religious core, allow that to be called trinity or even Trinity, and reserve a special term for the fourth-century version that we all get so upset over (my proposal is Triune God advocates/advocacy)? Something along these lines would be more effective in reducing ambiguity, rather than possibly adding to it, as the following (ironically) illustrates: "But it gets confusing, because unitarian (non-trinitarian)..." (p. 29) - by which Dale seems to contradict the central distinction of the chapter, except: no, the adjective should not apparently be subjected to such consistent distinctions (p. 33). Wow.
I used to think the distinction worked, but I personally don't think it's going to catch or even should.
Sorry for the quibble, I think everyone knows I am a big fan, hence my indulgence. :)

DT: Hi John. I'm not sure I understand this idea of a "mutated Jewish 3-fold religious core." About terms like "Trinity" or "trinity," there seem to be only three options. (1) they don't refer, (2) they refer to something, (3) the refer to some plurality of things, i.e. to more than one thing. I propose that it's helpful to use "Trinity" as referring to the triune God of catholic orthodoxy, and "trinity" to refer to the triad of God, his spirit, and his Logos. About the earlier Jewish view - that's just "God" right? Aka "the Father," "the King of the Universe," "Yahweh" - a mighty self, the creator. Yes?

JB: Hey Dale. I'm sorry for the lack of clarity in my explanations about the Triune Hub idea, although I have tried to explain them before in a couple of our other exchanges. On the subject of options, I would also want to place before a BU the following options: is this triad, small-t trinity, or whatever anything special in Christianity, including Jewish Christianity, or not? In your interview with Sean Finnegan I think you imply that it is special if the Bible might indeed be "all about" the small-t trinity. My Triune Hub hypothesis attempts to provide precisely the "thing" that we need in the absence of a first century Triune God. Expanding on Larry Hurtado's comments about how central Jesus is to God discourse for the first-century church, the accepted parlance of "mutation" by leading scholars such as Hurtado, Crossan and NT Wright, and the "Jewishness" of some of the sources that even correct misconstrual of Jesus' baptism with respect to his predecessor John (cf Acts 8:16, Matt 28:19, Didache 7:1 and even "unsuccessful mutation" of GThomas 44:1-3), the mutation I am proposing is that the central religious *space* or focus now includes a consistent articulation with the Son and Spirit. "Personhood" discussions aside, these three appear equally individuated in these significant references and to share **hitherto** (albeit with some conceptual "foreshadowing") - apperently - unassignable - divine (aka religiously-central) prerogatives.

DT: If I understand you, you suggesting that "Yahweh" turns out to really be there beings, functioning in a unified manner. Is that right?

JB: I'm not sure about "beings", certainly entities. I want to account for what you describe as "primary" trinitarianism (see your use on p. 113) in a way that makes better historical sense (ie Triune God advocacy as a "stable" interpretation of that which was primary, which has to be something other than "just a" triad). Otherwise we are still left with the impossible theological switch problem (wake up one day in 382 and decide that God is tri-personal). I have just completed a fuller response over on my blog to your excellent little book here: [link to this post]. Thanks for the exchange, always a real pleasure!

Thanks Dr. Tuggy for a great yet stimulating little book, very well referenced and clear. I have since been lucky enough to earn a response from Dale over on his blog

(Since I wrote this post, Dale Tuggy has responded to it over on his blog, Dialogue with John on Thinking about the Trinity, to which I now have an extended response: Responding to Dale Tuggy on Trinitarian Conceptualisation)

Hermeneutic Circle and asking better "why" questions

I have been making the newbie mistake of calling this circle a hermeneutical circle - sorry about that! The hermeneutic circle is a process of interpreting a text (or an author via his text) as developed in particular by Heidegger and Gadamer. In short, the disappointing news is that where the circle is operative, it is de facto going to bar your access to a text in any objective way.

The text is understood to have two important conditions. It must be terribly important to the reader, and it must be at least in part(s) difficult to comprehend. This difficulty is not necessarily readily apparent, I don't think, but is evidenced through the inevitable gap in "horizons" separating the author and the reader, differing worldviews affected by time in history, geographical location, culture, and so on.

Unfortunately, because hermeneutics was only developed in the last few hundred years, I am not sure how effectively it has been applied to our key question at hand: the emergence of the Triune God around the end of the fourth century, and indeed to other theological matters that "crystallised" in various directions. Even during the first century, I believe that we have the necessary ingredients to see the circle clearly in operation, and that is very significant if we are ever going to be able to move Christian apologetics away from frankly unconvincing anachronistic importations from a later time and yet still hold to some form of sensible first-to-fourth century continuity. If we are to achieve this goal, then hermeneutics is key. Not primarily in the sense of how we bridge the gap to today, our own contexts and our own lives, but to see how earlier gaps might have been bridged by Christians in the past, long before the word "hermeneutic" had ever been dreamed up. First century Judea was not fourth century Constantinople!

But what is this hermeneutic circle? Very simply put and as I understand it, it is the to and fro between the (Christian canonical) text and the reader's conceptual framework of meaning, out of which she is making sense of that text ("WHOLE", below). Each of these crisscrossing "trips" effects both elements (the whole and interpretation of the part), by which I mean the reader's general and multilayered understanding (right up to "their theology") and their interpretation of what the text is saying.

History of Christianity doesn't seem to embrace this concept enough, but perhaps it does attempt it under different guises.

One historian of Christian antiquity whose work I continue to respect is Bart Ehrman. His book How Jesus Became God arrived at a critical time in my deconstruction process in 2014 and the entire journey to which this blog bears witness. But it is his earlier and lesser known academic volume (and it is a sizeable book to be sure) The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, that I think carries a fantastic example of what I am trying to get at here. This book is of considerable note because it is really Ehrman's original field of expertise, textual criticism - since then it seems that he has strayed a bit into other areas in a (successful) bid to write for a wider audience. In The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Ehrman carefully and correctly insists that not all the changes that Christian scribes copying the texts made were accidental. The evidence for that is pretty irrefutable, multifaceted and extensive. Although I felt at times the book development made for some hypothesis-supporting conjecture, i.e. a too-tight association of a deliberate scribal corruption according to a specific heresy, the fundamental point that the scribe is safeguarding against misconstrual (rather than, in the scribe's mind, "corrupting" the text) is vital and all that matters for my purposes here. Ehrman has stacks of examples, but one that is perhaps the most deeply inscribed into my memory is Jesus' added titles. At various points in the codexes, scribes would deliberately add "Christ" and "Lord" at points they considered significant in the new copies they were transcribing. Why? There are other points in Scripture that contain combinations of "Lord Jesus", "Jesus Christ" and even "Lord Jesus Christ", so why add it to the new transcription? Here's Ehrman's reasoning, and it makes sense: some branches away from "orthodox" Christianity would read the Christian texts according to a variant "whole" (see above diagram), which included a "separationist Christology" (incredibly, that is still affirmed by popular Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr: Jesus is sharply and explicitly differentiated from "the Christ", "the Cosmic Christ", etc). According to this "whole", the Holy Spirit scene at Jesus' baptism was construed as the moment when the cosmic Christ entered into Jesus, before leaving him at his death on the cross (by the way, I am not saying that this is the conclusion Rohr makes, I'm sure it isn't). Back in the early Christian centuries, by adding "Christ", scribes certainly did not think they were the ones doing the corrupting. Quite the opposite, actually. By emphasising the inseparability of Jesus Christ (or Jesus from Christ), the scribes would have seen themselves as safeguarding a better interpretation against corruption.

There is always meaning to be found.

So, why would the church perform some almighty U-turn by suddenly switching from a Unitarian God to a Triune God sometime around the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381? Put this way, as Biblical Unitarians sometimes infer, it seems impossible, random, unbiblical, and... meaningless. I follow Dale Tuggy's work quite closely on his blog trinities.org (definitely worth checking, loads of great material in there), and I even get to contribute in a couple of very small ways to his show. But the closest I have seen to an answer to this fundamental "why" question, is that Greek mythology was rife with divine triads, and the fourth century was very complicated theologically for the church. But even as Tuggy does an expert job (in my opinion) at unravelling some of that fourth-century complexity, the listener is left with a decidedly bleak impression that these were such chaotic and political times, that there must, therefore, be a degree of randomness there that subverted Orthodox belief away from the Truth, and that this has stuck for a really, really long time.

I no longer buy it. We need to mine these controversies afresh to see what the deeper meaning is behind these debates, from both sides as far as we can understand them. For me, and I have probably mentioned this before, but it does no harm in repeating, there is one particular treasure to be mined in this transitional period, that is the very creed orthodox tradition has since labelled "The Blasphemy", officially: The Second Creed of Sirmium (357). It states: And the whole faith is summed up and secured in this, that the Trinity must always be preserved, as we read in the Gospel, Go ye and baptize all nations in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Complete and perfect is the number of the Trinity.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: they were all Trinitarians, they all believed that since Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit, there was a new centre to the faith that emerged from Judaism. So here's the crazy thing: the very creed that is dubbed "The Blasphemy" contains the very goal that united everybody. The problem with Sirmium was the interpretation of Jesus' words: "The Father is greater than I". So if the "Whole" comprises the three in (roughly) equal measure, and you want to push for "greater greatness" in one of the Three, what might be the interpreted outcome? I'll tell you exactly what I think the worry really was. Greatness in religion corresponds, I would argue nearly perfectly, with centricity. And if you make Father, Son or Spirit more central, then it is precisely that preservation of the Trinity that is thrown out of whack.

Look, I am not saying that the Triune God is "biblical", but I am going to give it credit for this: it posed a stable platform and standard from which further theological reflection could be realised without messing about with this important centricity issue, which up until this time lacked vocabulary. Where it had beforehand lacked vocabulary, it had not lacked meaning. So what do I think about the Triune God? It's interpretative. I've been saying that for two years now, but now with the help of the hermeneutic circle, I think we can see the strength of that claim. The Triune God solution is not random - it has purpose and is in line with the perceived threats of that time. It also includes quite a lot of ambiguity, as Tuggy points out, which actually dotes the stability also with flexibility.

I'm really eager to take this discussion soon back to Ricoeur's work, whose ideas about "ontology" (and its pitfalls) speak profoundly to the debates around the Trinity doctrine. Ricoeur also has helped me realise that it is possible that despite their best intentions, Biblical Unitarians might actually be importing some of the fourth-century baggage into their first-century analysis in precisely the ways they lament sloppy Triune-God advocates do, everyone failing to integrate historical hermeneutics into their models. My Triune Hub model must not make that mistake!

As chaotic and turbulent a century as the fourth century was to Christianity, it is vital that we see continuity as well as discontinuity. Sometimes the discontinuity at the time that seems huge to us from our vantage point might have seemed like a minor point of a whole series of adjustments that, just like in Ehrman's textual example, avoided misconstrual of a historically preceding idea, and guess what: it is "terribly important" and "difficult to understand".

Hermeneutics, we welcome you to the first four centuries of Christianity!

Jewish roots of the Trinity

As readers of my blog may have noticed, I can appear difficult to pin down on my views on the Trinity. That isn't because I enjoy that status - the reason is that my view simply doesn't fit any of the categories that I am currently aware of, and I continue to tweak it.

I see that we must make a distinction between two historical components or phases: a first century Judeo-Christian "mutation" and a late fourth-century Hellenistic preservation of the first-century mutation. Both are hermeneutic effects, but work differently.

In the New Testament, Father, Son and Spirit dominate. Never before in Jewish thought had focussed religious reflection ever been expressed in such a way, but that is the plain and evidential reality that we find in these first Christian texts (including early non-canonical texts, like the Didache).

The title of this post now needs some word of explanation. What I am about to grossly over-simplify is a Jewish threefold centre of their religious worldview and discourse. It is not a Hellenistic product (even if Tuggy is correct to assert an influence of divine triads over the development of Christian Trinitarianism, I would argue that this influence would be underscoring a pattern that we see already evidenced in the texts that we both agree are authoritative). However, it is also false to affirm that the second Hellenistic phase has also occurred, namely that God is triune. First, faith mutates into having a trinitarian structure. Secondly, the God concept mutates into having a trinitarian internal structure but in conformity with the faith mutation stage. 

What is going on in the first phase? The religious space typically accorded by the Jews to Yahweh alone, that hub, centre, core or whatever other synonyms you might prefer, had come to be shared with those other Two (my favoured term is "hub" because, in addition to centricity, it also carries the idea of movement of dependent elements around that hub). 

The first-century mutation, the Triune Hub, is making Jewish sense of:

• the Jesus events: death, postmortem encounters and enthronement visions mean the resurrection of God's Messiah and Son, physically absent but envisioned exalted and reigning at a cosmic level: at God's right hand.
• This super-exalted raised Messiah is also a clear instruction to worship God's annointed and continue to "follow" him.
• the unforeseeably early resurrection of Jesus winds the eschatological clock forward and prepares a new eschatological window: outpouring of the Spirit, empowering God's people symbolised through baptism to advance the inevitably victorious kingdom foreshadowed by Christ's victory over death and evil during the Easter-Passover weekend.

Between the two trinitarian mutation phases, there was a lot of heated debate within the church, particularly over Christ's exalted status as the movement rapidly outgrows its Jewish roots and moves wholesale into the Roman empire. This too is unwittingly hermeneutical, because while debating subordinationism, for example, and trying to understand quite what Christ meant when he said "the Father is greater than I", another threat was lurking in the shadows. By asserting an unnuanced interpretation of that statement, the Jewish root idea of tri-centric religious discourse was under threat, along with the movement hosting the discussion. If the church were to admit that one really was greater than another, then that lesser one would also begin a potentially slippery slide further and further from the divine centre space. This would throw the whole delicately balanced mutation out of whack. At some point, the words trias and later trinitas were introduced to help establish the hub with a referring term, even though God himself remained graciously one of those three.

When eventually events required some sort of resolution to this fourth-century crisis, it is the response to the subordinationists that wins the day. Orthodoxy - if we may personify it - subconsciously realised the inherent paradox of the Sirmium Council, which both affirmed the central task of forever preserving the Trinity and that one of those three really was lesser. Those two views are not compatible. Since it was indeed essential that the Trinity be forever preserved (or perhaps practiced would have been more faithful still to the New Testament texts), it could not be that one Trinity member was greater than another, where "greatness" carried symbolism of not just greatness or glory per se, but centricity.

So it is an over-simplification from the Unitarian minority report to insist that God is one, God is one, God is one, until suddenly a great theological switch is thrown to now insist that God is three in the late 300s. It's an impossible picture and one that would be far too destabilising for the church. No, you have to start earlier than the New Testament and affirm that God was identical to the space he occupied at the hub of the Jewish faith. Secondly, the faith unpredictably evolves to feature three somethings at the hub of the faith - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thirdly, the space is again reconciled with the being of God, comprising now three hypostases. So while the Unitarian will seek to show the drastic error of saying God was simply one and became three much later on, that person misses the organic nature of the development I am arguing for and the threefold centre of the faith they cherish. The number "three" can be seen as a threat to Unitarians, so they do not tend to focus on the possibility of such an early threefold hub. Perhaps they too, like Trinitarians, confuse trinitarian faith with trinitarian God. What both camps thus ignore is that the first and fourth-century churches share a triune hub. 

The fourth and fifth-century creeds, as ontological in focus as they might appear, should be seen to carry purpose, and that purpose is to guard - fiercely - the triune Hub rooted in the Jewish first-century church, by means of the philosophical tools available at the time. Those tools happen to be metaphysical and appear to be straight up fact claims, but they are loaded with the deeper purpose given at Sirmium.

Crucified God

On the Trinities podcast, we have been looking at various efforts to explain how one who is "fully God" could die, if God is immortal.

It's a bit of a head-scratcher, but I had a go at playing "devil's advocate" and wrote to both the show host and the PhD student advocating a new form of social Trinitarianism to try and assess the strengths of this approach.

Here then I posit the following impossible triad (all cannot be true) and how I think a Trinitarian should answer. These alternatives are inspired by Jurgen Moltmann's distinction that it is not as accurate to say death of God as death in God (The Crucified God) and McIntosh's intrinsic/group persons. If I were a fourth century or later trinitarian, I would also want to distinguish between person and being, or intrinsic and group persons. I would say that the Triune God is a being (or group person) and that Jesus Christ is not a being (or a group person); Jesus Christ is an intrinsic person.

Definitions:
God = one (group) being; God = three fully divine intrinsic persons, F S & HS
Immortal = "never dying"

1) God is essentially immortal
2) No fully divine person has ever died
2) Jesus is fully divine

As I mentioned in my comment, I think the way forward for a capital T Trinitarian might first be to deny the wording as accurate because Jesus Christ is an intrinsic person, not a being (i.e. human-divine person, not a human being), to substitute the word person for being, then deny 2. Now they can take refuge in the person/being distinction and propulse a possible further distinction that might follow from Moltmann's thought, that God experienced death within him.

Alternatively, if we took a McIntosh Group Person social Trinity, this scenario could invite the comparison with a closely knit family losing a treasured member. The functional group person experiences the death of an intrinsic person. Here, it is the group person who is essentially immortal, and the intrinsic person Logos incarnandus (Barth) who is not.

A new (very small additional) argument for a Triune Divinity from canonicity

...The second part that is overlooked is early Christianity. Did the early christians think that Jesus was Fully Divine, where that means that Jesus has all the Divine attributes? No they didn't. It's a matter of record that leading mainstream theologians taught that Jesus was not eternal, Jesus does not know as much as the Father, Jesus doesn't have the same kind of power, Jesus isn't good in the same way - his goodness depends on the goodness of God, whereas God has his goodness independently. Who am I talking about? Mainstream theologians in the 100s, and in the 200s and even into the 300s. When they came to a text like: "The Father is greater than I", they just said: yes, see: "greater". They didn't say greater with respect to his human nature but equally great with respect to his divine nature". And when he said he didn't know the day or the hour, they said "yes, only God is omniscient". Jesus isn't omniscient, he says he doesn't know something, you don't want to say he's a liar, right? You just don't find most early Christians saying that Jesus is fully divine. You see them saying things that go very clearly against that. Even after they're speculating about the pre-existent logos, the logos is divine, even after they're calling Jesus "our God", they'll turn right around and say the one True God is the Father, and only he is eternal, only he is perfect in knowledge and so on. And as we have just looked at, this claim that Jesus is fully divine is fully loaded with problematic speculations; it always was.

- Dale Tuggy, 2016, http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-145-tis-mystery-immortal-dies/ at ‘Tis Mystery all - 21st Century Reformation Theological Conference 30/04/2016

For me, originally a die-hard exegesis fan (and the die-hard is not dead yet), this argument is very significant. In my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I argued that if we are right about the early church Fathers not believing that God was Triune, then we have a problem. One of the solutions I considered, which I have never heard argued, is that the inspired 1st century authors were so inspired that they were literally centuries ahead of their subsequent interpreters. Most people prefer to argue that the earlier (Ehrman would call them "proto-orthodox") theologians, were roughly right, but they were less refined or something like that.

I think there are quite a few theologians who believe the conciliar Christologies are basically on track and that this perspective simply takes a very long time to work out (and it is not finished yet, and its various interpretations today are multiple and mutually-incompatible). That might mean that non-triune things are said in the Scriptures, which, if all are to be considered true on a deep level, that you end up with something looking like a form of Trinitarianism. But God set the whole thing up for a huge debate from an obscure beginning in order for it to stand somehow (because it didn't come easily; paradoxically because it was not as blazingly obvious as evangelical apologists like to assume and argue today). That's an argument I'd be more open to: but I think I have another option still. These beliefs about the Triune God began around about the same time the canon was sealed, so to speak. It could be argued that the wrestling and debating going on with regard to canonicity are not independent of the christological wrestling. Had the canon been clearer earlier, then maybe the Triune God perspective would have emerged earlier too. The same church that decided these are the books, is the church that said, this is our Christ.

My position might be considered to drift. It isn't, or hasn't much. I still firmly believe given the lack of clarity and the supreme position of the Scriptures, the close proximity of the church Fathers in terms of chronological interpretive distance, that we have to allow for greater breadth and tolerance and welcome differing views of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For me, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit remain central to church life, individual faith and the advancing Kingdom of God. And that has always been the case for me.

This is where the Biblical Unitarian communities, I think, also need to be careful. They can be so sceptical of a whiff of a "divine" Christ, that it could be harder for them (I speculate) to worship Jesus, even if they knew it was to the glory of God the Father, as explicitly stated in Philippians 2.

Let the debate roll on!

Parlez-vous français? Layers of knowledge questioned

As I hope my friends might admit: I do like to question all sides. For indeed, if we are to assume that there are just two possibly correct ways forward in almost any apparent dichotomy is simply to accept the current categorisation system presented. For me, there is not much point in blindly siding with one camp in a debate if both sides hold weak (or potentially weak) positions. Sometimes one position might be overall strong but appeal to a false argument, for instance. That false argument does not disprove the overall position of the arguer, but it does need challenging. One scholar who has helped me a lot is Dale Tuggy, but he is by no means exempt from my approach (as I am sure he would be relieved and proud to learn!), and my recent interactions prove it. I took up of Dale's "challenge" (see his philosophical argument here and my response here, soon to be smashed no doubt on an upcoming trinities podcast episode, hey ho), and I also question the true strength of what you could call a "Jesus' knowledge argument", the subject of this post.

I recently began the latter on Facebook group, trinities, concerning layers of knowledge within a "self" (the eventual subject of this post). I don't do this questioning (or this blog) to be Mr. Inquisitorial or to make some kind of great point about my quest for bias-free truth, as if such a thing could exist, but simply because I am not a fan of partisanship, and also for the reason stated above. I also disagree that bias cannot be reduced through rigorous questioning of all sources (I still have some ways to go with some other authors whom I highly respect and whom I have yet to question in detail, in particular Daniel Wallace and Larry Hurtado), otherwise why on earth bother, frankly?

So let us return to this facebook post, to which I unfortunately cannot provide you the link as it is a closed group (although you can request to join). Here's what I wrote there about a simple dream I had (I wrote it within a few minutes of waking, as it struck me almost immediately as odd):

Last night I had a strange dream I want to share with you. I started to speak to a guy in the dream whom I thought was a vague acquaintance. Only when he looked puzzled back at me and began to stammer [...] did I realise that in fact he was French! So I introduced myself in French and it turned out (in the dream) he was a friend of a good (French) friend of mine, who had also just turned up. 
Why on Earth do I share this? Because as the author of the dream I clearly must have known that the guy couldn't understand me, and yet at the same time I hadn't a clue! What do you make of that?

The response I received was that I didn't intentionally or voluntarily generate the character - it wasn't like I was writing a book.

Before I develop: why is this debate significant? Well there are a couple of non-Tinitarian arguments that seem very powerful to non-Trinitarians (or let's be clearer still, people who don't hold to a Triune-God view) that I don't think need to be seen as total show-stoppers. I don't think they are wrong arguments, but the methodology does not necessitate the conclusions that God cannot be triune. One of these, and it comes up all the time, concerns Jesus' birth, especially Luke 1:35, which has often interested me as a point of reverse bias (I see extensive bias on the Triune-God side too!). I already looked at the non-Trinitarian treatment of Luke 1:35 on a previous post here, which I entitled: Learning to live within the confines of one's own convictions.

So why is the dream story of the French-speaking dude significant? For almost two years now I have been pretty sceptical of the two-natures explanation of Christ, which we inherit from the fifth century ecumenical council at Chalcedon as an accurate interpretation of the New Testament texts. It's a pretty neat solution to a difficult problem. How come Jesus couldn't do this or that if he was God Almighty, like die, for example (for Trinitarians, Jesus did not die according to his divine nature, since God is immortal, but he did die according to his human nature). To be honest, despite its "neatness", it often comes across pretty weird and a fair ol' distance from what the texts themselves are trying to communicate. But there was one particular aspect of the two-nature hypothesis that seemed to me almost plain... stoopid. Knowledge.

However, while I still don't like the two-natures approach, I do now think Triune-God advocates, and the fifth-century Catholic church, may have been in less trouble than some non-Trinitarian positions believe, regarding the issue of Jesus' limited knowledge. Firstly, I think unofficial orthodoxy (excuse me for the oxymoron) actually no longer tries to hold Christ to knowing and not knowing simultaneously - a logical impossibility right, if the one person, Jesus, is a single "knower"?

As far as I can tell, the traditional route was the two natures "solution". This problem nowadays, however, is more generally avoided, not by appealing to the nature flick-switch (human-divine action/ability), but rather, with perhaps some rather heavy reliance upon Philippians 2:7, to plainly state that Christ forewent omniscience when he "emptied himself" or "became nothing" in becoming a servant, a man, after having subsisted in God's form. Since the 19th century, theologians argue about quite when he might have resumed these divine prerogatives, but as you probably spotted in my discussion around Thomas' declaration, I tire quickly these days of Trinitarians attempting to show their Trinity members can be divorced from the others (can Jesus do X or Y without the Holy Spirit?) to dissect them and shove their individual divine stuff under the theological microscope, one after the other. Byuck. That's no longer a Trinitarian methodology I can embrace.

But what my dream showed me was that Tuggy's notion of "self" needs further clarification, at least for me. On his Stanford Encyclopedia entry on the Trinity, he states: "A self is a being which is in principle capable of knowledge, intentional action, and interpersonal relationships." This includes my awareness of my environment and my conscious thoughts, but according to this definition, almost all of my deeper fears, desires, memories and knowledge also, which is 90% under the surface, literally dormant. Ambivalence is common experience we can all relate too: two contrasting and simultaneous emotions. This is totally normal for a human being. So this speaks into too simplistic a view of conflicting wills and also into my knowledge. While Dale might be right in saying I didn't voluntarily create this character, he is saying this with respect to my consciousness (or whatever you call sleep consciousness). Another part of me had a ready explanation.

To conclude, this strange dream experience reminds me that the human mind is a complex entity and capable of contradictory mental processes operating at different levels of awareness. The same could be said of Christ without resorting to either fifth century dogmatic frameworks, or to much more recent kenosis theories.

Dale's challenge

Dr. Dale Tuggy has gone for it, publishing a 9-part argument to show that "Jesus is not a god". He is pretty confident that is both valid and sound. Valid means that conclusions are definitely correct if the premises are sound. I am not certain either are the case. Here's his challenge, which I am glad to take up!


1. God and Jesus differ.
2. Things which differ are two (i.e. are not numerically identical)
3. Therefore, God and Jesus are two (not numerically identical). (1, 2)
4. For any x and y, x and y are the same god only if x and y are not two (i.e.are numerically identical).
5. Therefore, God and Jesus are not the same god. (3,4)
6. There is only one god.
7. Therefore, either God is not a god, or Jesus is not a god. (5, 6)
8. God is a god.
9. Therefore, Jesus is not a god. (7,8)

My initial "pumping the brakes", to use a Dustin Smith expression, came on premise 6. Much recent Old Testament research (see especially Michael Heiser and Nathan Macdonald) is highlighting the compliance of Israelite theology with other ancient Middle-East perspectives on the Divine Council. There is a complex and hierarchical reality within the divine realm. Yahweh, presides over a council of gods, sometimes called "sons of God", in ancient Israelite thinking. But "god", often elohim, does not necessarily refer to Yahweh. Yahweh is Israel's Elohim, and Israel is Yahweh's chosen people. So 6 seemed initially misleading to me as a premise or at least appeared seated on modern and unbiblical concepts of monotheism. Tuggy has kindly responded to me on this concern of mine:

6 can be paraphrased like this: there is only one being who is divine in the ways that Yahweh is, e.g. being the ultimate source of all else, being uniquely provident over history. If this is what we mean by "being a god" throughout the argument, do you think it is sound?

My answer remains no, until he shows me how he can re-work his argument from the start.

So let's go through it point by point:

1. God and Jesus differ.

This sentence strikes me as incomplete. Imagine two hippos (hippos are going to be something of a theme in the antimodalist push of the blog in the future), Godfrey and Jessy.

They might be identical-twin hippos, but one of them is standing here and one of them is standing somewhere else. Everybody is happy that they are not the same hippo. Now what could we say of Godfrey and Jessy if during a terrible famine in their habitat and surrounding area, that Jessy died and Godfrey had no choice but to eat his dead brother hippo in order to survive. Jessy is dead but his body has been entirely consumed into the body of Godfrey. You might want to argue that at this point of time, they are no longer two but one, they have literally fused.

A much more simple reference would be you. If you are losing your hair, then the you of today and the you of 10 years ago definitely differ, because you had more hair back then. Oops, I meant me ;)
So, what this premise lacks is a time-reference. Perhaps it should have been God and Jesus have differed at a given point in time. Without the time reference, you cannot arrive successfully at 3.

2. Things which differ are two (i.e. are not numerically identical)

I differ from the me of 10 years ago, but I am one. Since my conception, my number (1) has transcended time. So here we also need the time reference: Things which differ at a given point in time are two. Thank goodness we don't have time machines....

3. Therefore, God and Jesus are two (not numerically identical). (1, 2)

Godfrey and Jessy were two at a given point in time, although they later became one single hippo. So while Tuggy's argument thus far is more or less valid, it seems to lack a time factor: God and Jesus were two at a given point in time.

4. For any x and y, x and y are the same god only if x and y are not two (i.e. are numerically identical).

Don't like it, not here. I don't think it passes my hippo test. Furthermore, it feels too much like a refusal to consider the claim of the Trinitarians, that it is possible to have x and y being the same god. It surely cannot be sufficient to simply say that is not possible. Think of anything that is on the very edge of what is possible today. Could it have been said as possible a 100 years ago? I do not see why 4 has been included here mid-stream. It discredits the logical progression. It feels like we are trying to travel to India, and have got lost in Delhi half way.

5. Therefore, God and Jesus are not the same god. (3,4)

Godfrey and Jessy are now the same hippo, even though they have historically differed. By the way before they differed, in one of Mummy-hippo's fallopian tubes, there was also a time when "they" were not yet a "they" - there was a single fertilised creature, yet to split into two identical hippo foetuses.

6. There is only one god.

Even if we understand this in its much more specific way: there is only one being who is divine in the ways that Yahweh is, then I think we are in trouble. At least I am not yet sure that level of specificity does not ruin the argument, because the ambiguity over "God", which Tuggy concedes, is precisely and necessarily squashed at this crucial junction, as step 7 will immediately show:

7. Therefore, either God is not a god, or Jesus is not a god. (5, 6)

No. The most high creator God is a god. I am not yet convinced that Tuggy is taking into account the henotheistic option offered by the Old Testament writings (and even the New, Heiser is at pains to point out).

8. God is a god.

Yes!

9. Therefore, Jesus is not a god. (7,8)

No, I don't think that's right, not for a henotheistic Jew who is basically excluded from this argument.