Why We Bind Theology To Doxology

1. Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology (J. I. Packer).

Logos.com describes Packer as "perhaps one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

2. I think a good theologian prays well, first. No theologian who doesn’t has even begun to understand the discipline. And then s/he serves the Church, and his or her particular part of it (down to a local congregation) in humility and faithfulness. Theology belongs to the Church; any theologian divorced from the Church is a bad theologian, however brilliant or knowledgeable. A good theologian has a grasp of gospel values, and would swap everything s/he has written to see one sinner repent, or one broken life healed. A good theologian writes and speaks only to help the Church be more faithful to the gospel, bringing whatever knowledge of the tradition, whatever insight into contemporary modes of thought, and whatever native cleverness s/he may possess, all into service of this one end. A good theologian is marked by humility and cheerfulness, knowing how far short of the mystery of God and God’s works his/her best efforts fall, and knowing that in the good grace of God something of lasting worth may still come from them. A good theologian, finally, does know something, and has some capacity of thought, and so can make a contribution through his/her God-given vocation.

I am not a very good theologian.

(S. Holmes)

I describe Stephen Holmes as an extremely knowledgeable and apparently humble theologian. Holmes had an important impact on my own understanding of the Trinity around 2014-2015, and I continue to use his book for reference on historical contributions.

The purpose of our learning and contributions is not for us, but for Another and for others who worship that Other - God, say Holmes and Packer and indeed the lion's share of Christian theologians. Are they correct? Does theology lead to doxology? Doxology defines itself pretty clearly to me, but how is theology to be defined? If it is that which we can say of God via the biblical text on the historical platform from which we gaze, then we presume the reality of the God in question. Thus, in the case of Christian theology, then we must indeed humbly agree and reaffirm what is said above.

However, it should probably be remembered as well that Christianity is also an intensely historical phenomenon which has affected humanity globally. Therefore, historical studies can and must overlap considerably with the work of theologians. This is where we need to tread carefully and, I think, welcome the inter-worldview historical task. On the one hand, "neutral" history without faith commitment could actually shed greater light on Christianity's authenticity. On the other hand, it could also cast doubt on central tenets, doctrines or beliefs. 

This comparison and overlap remind me a little of the evolution "debate": we see some anti-christian science on the one hand, and six-day creationists on the other. However, I think, most people overlap: scientists on the most-part are not setting out to disprove religions, simply to understand the universe better and produce life-enhancing insights. It's positive, not negative. Further, many Christians, myself included, do not believe a six-day creation 6000 years ago to be at all credible in light of the data produced by extensive research. What do we do in that overlapping space? We interact. Christians do science; scientists have faith. Both are enhanced. 

The same should be said and clarified for theology and history. Historical theology reaches back through the hermeneutical spiral toward the source, both for theologians and historians of religion. Collaboration is necessary. Collaboration produces the results both enterprises need and should detract from individual glory.

But let's get back to the Christian task of theology. Yes, theology in its brute form is without a doubt a Christian task. But why point out that it has to lead to doxology? What might the alternative be? Obsession? Pride? Distraction?

For me, I do believe there is truth in this from the perspective in which I have been raised and have now affirmed as an adult believer. But during my recent journey, theology has been quite historical when I was horrified to consider that my cherished trinitarian beliefs no longer seemed to fit the biblical text that I also cherished so dearly. Theology is also about wanting to know the truth, and that's ok. That can take time. And mistakes. And learning. And humility. Such a process can run deep through your soul, and, without you even realising it, prepare the way for a deeper and sounder doxology than the fractured, pride-ridden self could have arrived at without the history. 

Is the theology to doxology idea something of a paradox, why even bother saying it? Perhaps theology requires that it be said from the same lips of those who have authentically and personally wrestled with the issue for themselves (I make no judgement on either Holmes or Packer here), but that incarnational approach I find deeply appealing. Any preacher who speaks of his own pride gets my instant and total attention. I can relate to him or her. Now we get real. Now we get to ditch the crowns, and we can do it together and we can do it alone.

Perhaps also theology doesn't want Christians to get too lost in historical analysis and forget their purpose. As we have said, there is this wide overlap with historical analysis, with its neutral goal of simply better understanding past events. There can be a conflict of interests though here. Let's take my example of the Gospel of Matthew. I have deeply divided feelings about the Gospel of Matthew. Part of me loves it - in particular, we get the sermon on the mount, which is amazing. My history part loves it too, as I now understand the baptism formula in 28:19 in a new light that enhances earlier teaching. However, my faith part has at times suffered as I have wrestled with the modifications that I see this author has made to his sources and his thinly concealed objectives. My understanding of Scripture and inspiration has been severely tested in the case of Matthew, yet when I look back in history I also get fresh faith: Matthew ends up being the most popular and retranscribed gospel (I think) for the early church. A massive contribution has been made by Matthew, and I am an inheritor of its contribution, whatever the conclusions I reach about it. 

It may feel like a paradox at times when we get to ugly texts or bits we don't know if they are even literally truely recounting actual events in our past. But if we stop for a second as Christians and ask ourselves why we are even asking that historical question, we should remember to answer ourselves: because we want to know God better.

Important Trinity article: Women theologians and Jenson's primary vs secondary distinction

Let me please interrupt my series on Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ book to share what for me was an important article recently written for Christianity Today by Fred Sanders: you can read it here. Entitled, We Actually Don’t Need a Trinitarian Revival, it drew my attention to two important points. Firstly, that there have been important contributions made to Trinitarian theology by female theologians of whom I confess to total ignorance; indeed I lament their absence in my manuscript of Mutated Faith & the Triune Hub.

Secondly, Sanders emphasises that there are indeed two distinct stages of trinitarianism, and even refers to Robert Jenson as the possible inaugurator of "primary trinitarianism" vs "secondary trinitarianism" distinctions. Robert Jenson has been described by Dr Stephen Holmes as (my rough paraphrase according to memory) the greatest living theologian. Clearly I have some reading to do - I promise to update the blog in the future about the female contributions (Catherine Mowry LaCugna and Cynthia Bourgeault, maybe others) and precisely how Jenson stakes out this distinction, and (critically) if he attempts to show how primary led to secondary.

Back soon...

Unitarians on the Holy Spirit

I am still pondering how to take forward my antimodalist convictions. It is difficult because I do not yet have collaborators and there is not much written material on modalism influences in the modern church. It occurred to me as I walked and prayed and worshipped and reflected this morning that to take it forward I must ask for God's providential help in other's ideas and skills. Another important consideration is the Holy Spirit.

Stephen Holmes is probably the Trinitarian I appreciate and trust within the reflective Trinitarian theological community, as anyone who follows this blog probably realises (posts influenced by issues he raises can be seen here). In my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I lean on his research and insights quite heavily. His core claim is that God is Trinitarian, but not tripersonal in the modern sense of the word "person". For Holmes, there is one divine personality, one mind, one will, one creator, yet three hypostases which are "God three times over", language he borrows I think from another "one-self" Trinitarian, Brian Leftow. These one-self Trinitarians are not modalists, but they are also not too developed on the distinctives between the hypostases of Father, Son and Spirit. The point is rather this: Holmes claims a radical re-working of Trinitarian doctrine in the last 100-150 years, culminating in "social Trinitarianism", combining three highly distinct persons into one God. There is a historical Trinitarianism from which modern social trinitarianism radically departs.

I wondered this morning if a similar kind of radical redefinition could be levelled at the Unitarians. Unitarians believe that God is one single being, comprising one person, the Father, to whom we have access uniquely through his perfect, glorious, and universe-entrusted Son, Jesus, and whose authority and presence is shared to his people through the sending by this Son, from the Father, of this Holy Spirit, as foretold long ago. OK maybe not all Unitarians express it like that, but I suspect and hope many of the Biblical Unitarian branch might have something like that in mind. So how might Unitarians have radically differed in more recent centuries to their predecessors?

Take the Arians or the homoisians (or homoians), for example. It is quite difficult to know exactly what they thought and taught as they were the "losers" of the great theological controversies of the fourth century. Indeed, we only have a version from the victors who, with Irenaeus perhaps setting the early precedent in 3rd century, were bent not only on showing how insane their position was, but also often to highlight their moral failings, corrupted minds, and so on, in order to discredit their opponents. However, in reading some of their polemical writings, we do learn of a fascinating difference, I think, with modern-day Unitarianism: the way in which they spoke of the Holy Spirit was interpreted by their anti-homoian opponents as that of a creature. The Holy Spirit is a creature? By this, clearly no-one understood a biological organism, but one that was created by God the Father, from whom all things derrive.

Today no-one believes that the Holy Spirit is a creature! Trinitarians understand this one as the third member of a Triune God, co-equal, co-glorified, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father and the Son, intrinsically involved with all divine operations and action. Unitarians believe that this one is not really a person at all and point to the [ontologically] impersonal language most of the Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit and the subtle pushes of the translators toward a more personal depiction (e.g. all of the "who" you see in reference to the Bible could just as correctly, from a linguistic point of view, be translated "which" - did you know that?) They would (or should) rally around another theologically-developed idea of the Spirit being "God's empowering presence" (see Gordon Fee's classic work entitled precisely this way).

Homoousians, homoiousians and homoians

There's three ancient Greek words you do not see every day! They are, however, extremely relevant to understanding what most Christians believe today in our history, and will lead us to a rather key question regarding the belief that prevailed; I will be asking both Stephen Holmes and Bart Ehrman for their points of view on this question (maybe I'll bug Dale Tuggy again too, but I am still waiting for another answer from him, so don't want to bug him too much). But first, let's define.

Homoousian is the belief-set that Jesus is of the same substance or essence as God the father [the one and only divine].

Homoiousian is the belief-set that Jesus is of similar substance or essence as God the father.

Homoian rejects any talk of substance with "its materialistic overtones, inevitably misleading and unhelpful" (Holmes, Quest For the Trinity, p 93), but still keeps the key iota there, that Jesus is like God.

In Holmes' book, the Homoiousian and Homoian distinction is not clearly developed, with Holmes concentrating mainly on the predominant Homoian belief in the fourth century. I am not sure why that is, and Wikipedia, for instance, is able to cite many more Homoiousians than Homoians - I suspect that the distinction is fine and not exclusive. What is fascinating is that in the fourth century, when these first monumental councils and creeds were coming together, it is not the Homoousian view that initially prevailed. Furthermore, the Roman Emperor Constantine who was absolutely pivotal in the 325 Council formation, was baptised several decades later by a Homoian (or Homoiousian) bishop, just before he died! It was by no means a foregone conclusion (Ehrman) that the Homoousians were going to win out, but in the end they did.

And so we get closer to our question - why was that? When I read Holmes' couple of chapters on this key period, and remember that Holmes is a deep and devout believer himself in God's sovereignty in this process, he points to a lack of unity among the Homoians. They were also too busy trying to dismantle the opposing view, without "doing theology" themselves. In the meantime, the Homoousians were very busy doing theology. Somehow, I still do not quite get it.

I am not certain that Ehrman's orthoparadoxes idea quite answers it either - this is Ehrman's idea that what prevailed was where certain "right" (ortho) beliefs of one belief-set were maintained and others rejected from several different 2nd and 3rd century Fathers, none of which were fully orthodox (and some, like Origen, positively condemned later), in order to gain a paradoxically, but ultimately purely orthodox view.

So let's see if I get lucky with some answers...

Who carries Thomas the Tank Engine?

Like some serious one-self Trinitarians, and like Stephen Holmes, I also am generally wary of the analogies drawn from our human existence to understood the true and most high God. The risk, as Dr Holmes highlights emphatically, is to focus only on the analogies (such is the accusation placed at the social trinitarians' door over humanified personhood) and ignore the dis-analogies.

That said (!), I have one that I find helpful, that I stumbled over the other day and that comes back to me now as I re-visit once again God and Jesus both being Saviour in Titus. My son was feeling tired coming back from school, so I agreed to carry him on my shoulders, but I needed him to carry his own little bag - my hands were full holding onto him! So an idea birthed in me that needed an image to blog about here. But although the idea is pretty simple, it was surprisingly hard to find anything helpful on google image search, so I have had to take a photo myself. The image is thus of me, carrying my son, who himself carries his own little Thomas the Tank Engine rucksack. As I say, it struck me quite powerfully the other day that it is entirely possible that two different people can be performing the same action on the same object at the same cost, and maintain having totally distinct identities. Yes, I am officially becoming a theological geek!

Neither our shared act of carrying, nor the singularity of the object, the one and only Thomas the Tank Engine bag of my son, make any difference to the fact that I am simply me, and my son (he is actually my one and only son!) is simply him; we remain simply two different persons and beings. But how much does the bag weigh to me? Precisely 1 kg. How much does the bag weigh to my son? Precisely 1 kg. The only difference is that I am doing the lifting of the Thomas bag through my son, who also must carry the exact same amount.

I am upholding the Thomas bag
My son is upholding the Thomas bag
Therefore...
either
In some complex way, I and my son are of one same essence and being, and it is this one same essence and being that is doing the upholding. If that being were to let go, the Thomas §bag would come crashing to the ground.
or
In some mediative way, I and my son can be simpler, separate persons and human beings, but we both are performing the same operation on the same object. There is however an important distinction. I am upholding the Thomas bag, indirectly, through [dia] my son. My son is upholding the Thomas bag directly, but is only able to do so because I am upholding him, along with his Thomas bag. If either I or my son were to let go, then the Thomas bag would come crashing to the ground.

I am also reminded of all that God does in Acts through Jesus' apostles.

So, how'd I do on my first analogy dabble?!

Matthew 21: The Parable of the Tenants, the question of SENDING, and the limits of analogy and poetic language

I came across this in my main study today and considered whether or not it is of any use to us in the quest for the truth of 4th and 5th century creeds in the pages of Scripture. At first I thought there might be some mileage in developing the whole idea of “sending”. Trinitarians get quite excited about the Johannine passages that speak of Jesus being sent into the world… they presume from his pre-human-but-utterly-alive-continuously-begotten state into flesh, rather than God’s personified word being enfleshed in the man Jesus.

So in this parable, the owner of the vineyard “sends” multiple servants, before finally sending his son, who is killed. Of course, none of these sons pre-existed because they were "sent".

I am, however, cautious about using this example for the very reasons that Stephen Holmes is keen to highlight. He looks at our tendency = to disregard the dis-analogies in the use of metaphor (see Trinities episodes 42 and 43). It reminded me of John 1:6, and I thought, wow God does a lot of sending and birthing supernaturally to other people too! If any of these non-Jesus references had been said of Jesus, I am sure they would have been paraded in similar ways to John 1:2's English "he" (see this post and also how I attempt to bring clarification through it, and the French "elle" in reference to the Logos to the slightly side-tracked Trinities discussion here).

However, Holmes' words of warning have left an indelible mark on me, and we need to be careful to see this picture as ... a picture, not a statement of hard fact, but conveying truth about God's love for mankind and his judgement for those who reject it, I guess. This same logic, should, I feel, also be applied to passages like Isaiah 9, which do not work in the details, but do function in a broader wider way. I mention this example as a side response to my friend D., whom I have asked to send me some more info on Isaiah 9.

Quick Christianity jabs

I am so grateful and glad that Daniel Wallace is alive, kicking and writing.

In his latest post on his blog, published yesterday here, Wallace easily deals with the hasty attack on Christianity by Kurt Eichenwald, who, writing for Newsweek, exaggerates the so-called unreliability of the New Testament transmission methods, even overstating Bart Ehrman's case. Just to give you an example of some of the unsubstantiated things Eichenwald says, and Wallace should have mentioned this I think, and this of the 381 Council of Constantinople: "a new agreement was reached—Jesus wasn’t two, he was now three—Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Oh really?!

One of Wallace's key points, however, is to state that we are not talking of a near-perpetual linear series of translations of translations, one of Eichenwald's points. All serious translations of today are working off manuscripts, some of which "go as far back as" the 2nd century.

I am currently reading through Wallace's book at the moment on Revisiting the Corruption of the New Tesetament: Manuscript, Patristic and Apocryphal Evidence. 

My intention, by the way, for anyone who is interested and for my own reference, is to publish chapter summaries. Each subject is distinct and actually written by a different scholar, with the whole lot edited by (and the first chapter written by) Daniel B. Wallace. In this book, one of the key challenges of Ehrman's interpretations is that he does not acknowledge his own biases, in particular the criteria of orthodox corruption. While that is not entirely true, from what I can see, we have another clear case here that works in the opposite direction. So when we see "as far back as the second century" from Wallace, Ehrman would maintain that the second century is still a fair old way off from the first and very fragmentary in what we do have, and even these are probably at least copies of copies of a copy (or of copies). He also would remind us that from the evidence we hold, in manuscript copying errors intensify the further you go back and that we simply "cannot know" what the originals said. 

While I agree with Wallace that Ehrman overstates his case, it is easier for me to see now when presumptions are "smuggled onto the table" (Stephen Holmes' expression), and here "as far back as" implies that this is an incredibly long way back. Challenged, the Wallace crew would be quick to compare to other ancient Greek texts that are much less well attested in terms of manuscript evidence. Ehrman is not in the business of comparing, however, and has no more faith in the copies of manuscripts that we have of Homer, for example, as representative of what was originally penned to parchment. 

But the key issue I think here in Wallace's otherwise solid defence against this weak attack by Eichenwald, is an often-forgotten translation stage. It seems to have been too obvious to mention by everyone, but it is not insignificant: the quotations in the gospels are already translations. We should be aware of that and reminded of that in these sorts of conversations. So in that sense, perhaps unwittingly, Eichenwald had a point he did not realise he was scoring!

"I can't sign that!"

I am in the process of typing up my scribbles on Holmes' Quest for the Trinity book - almost there (I will share the link hopefully tomorrow). There are some wonderful quotes in there - as well as reflections that require some serious consideration.

First something I believe many would relate to, perhaps in the wake of what I sense to be a fresh hardening in this area of doctrinal adherence in some Christian organisations and churches, from p173-4:

"It is not a surprise that an appetite grew up amongst those not controversially inclined for a disciplined refusal to go beyond biblical language; at the Salters' Hall Synod of 1719, called in response to the challenge of several recent and powerful anti-Trinitarian texts, notably William Whiston's Primitive Christianity (1711) and Samuel Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), many ministers, including a majority of the Presbyterians and almost all the General Baptists, declined to sign a proposed statement of faith on the grounds that its language was not found in the Bible. They were not closet anti-Trinitarians; they had merely reached the point of believing that definitions couched in technical language generated argument more often than understanding."

Slugs

From Stephen Holmes, with reference to Basil of Caesarea. 

Yes we are recognising that man is similar to God, and angels. But the fundamental divide in the universe is between God and his creation, and humans fall firmly on the side of the slugs and trees.

What I love about Stephen Holmes is that, despite his clear position and interpretations, many of which he is careful not to "smuggle onto the table" (as he puts it), he is not afraid to cut across a popular perception of truth. When he achieves this historically he masterfully undermines the current theological groove, because it would be harder to show that the biblical authors believing one thing, the church fathers and centuries something quite different, before finally we rediscovered the original perspective which very fortuitously coincided with the rise of humanism. 

Time-locked language Part 3

Update on posts Time-locked language Parts 1 and 2: 

We should note that Zizioulas (Holmes, QFT, p13) strongly emphasises the Father's causing principle within the trinity. Holmes says Zizioulas qualifies this causation as something "free and personal, not something mechanical and fixed." The question and challenge raised for this article on time-locked language, is now to find something that is "free and personal" that can be caused in a non-time-dependant way. Can you think of anything?

I think I finally see a way through here in looking back at the Greek word, αἰτία, an old theological principle to which Zizioulas wants to remain loyal. In Strong's Greek NT 156 we have indeed something less mechanical. Here we speak of "guilt", responsibility, accusation, fault, grounds, reason. I cannot deny that this opens a quite different discussion in terms of NT authors' perspective around the notion of causation, however, it really must not be forgotten that this word is not used for this purpose prior to the patristic period, that is hundreds of years AFTER the scriptures were written (it would seem particularly around the debates surrounding the Filioque clause, St Maximus the Confessor, and the 15th Century Council of Florence). Where the Scriptures speak of the interpersonal relationships between God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit vocabulary other than αἰτία is used. The word "send" jumps out very strongly in my mind.

Exegetical pressure, exegetical pressures and "Canonical Pressure"

(updated twice from note originally written in September '14. 16/04/2015)

"Exegetical pressure" (Holmes and others - Childs?) is - I am now convinced - not the right term in this whole debate. Of course I may be misunderstanding or not fully processing what Holmes means by this expression, exegetical pressure (hear him respond to questions at the end of his Fuller lecture), but when we see some of the early exegetical processes, I feel nothing short of shocked! It is the very foundations of biblical exegesis that are leading me to question which way does the “pressure” might lead us.

Well, the answer is... there probably is not one exegetical pressure, unless we redefine exegesis in a way similar to Holmes’ suggestion at the Fuller lecture. There are exegetical pressures, plural. Some believe they lead one way, and others another culminating in one general "pressure".

But there is a third way, expounded by Ehrman and others: the authors did not all believe the same thing about Jesus. A trinitarian will say, or at least in my view should say, that is fine, God revealed different aspects to different writers, and even to the same authors different aspects at different times (e.g. nearness of Christ's second coming for Paul in 1 Thessalonians) and it is the beautiful, painstaking, complementary and collective mosaic of revelation that results in such a wonderful finale. This finale thus harmonises these perspectives into a single portrait, approximating the extraordinary fourth-century creed. The unitarians have many texts that are in favour of distinction between God and Jesus in the New Testament writers' mind that do not require in my view quite the same mosaic approach or creedal layering.

But while the battle is being wrought, and different assumptions being accused, they all miss the great assumption that actually unites them, quite possibly into the one faith, although many would disagree with me on that.

This is the assumption:

At the end of the day, the bible must be cohesively uni-vocal on this issue of whether or not Jesus is God, there simply cannot exist a plurality of pressures.

I think we can give a name to this assumption: canonical pressure. Both camps share a wonderfully deep reliance on this assumption and yet often fail to spot their common ground.


Some of this was inspired from the rather engaging debate with Buzzard and White here, where this assumption is not even laid out.

Time-locked language (Part 2)

Source.

Generate.

Spirate.

Proceed.

Cause.

...................Beget. 

?

b. From doctrinal to Scriptural usage: a leap of faith

The Holy Scriptures agree about the time-rootedness of these words. Even in the closest we get to anything like a present tense, which I think might be Psalm 7:2 and its quotation (and validation?!) in Hebrews 1:5, we are still utterly time-bound. Today, yes, but: "I have begotten you". If that information is to be comprehended by a language-speaking educated human, then they are no longer at a conception stage or age, they are at an adoptive age. I am not saying that Jesus was adopted as Son of God here, in either a human way or even an ungraspable divine way, although some think this was one of the earliest christologies that may have existed (and by no means a bad thing either, check out Ehrman on the superiority in the Roman mind at least, of being adopted over a natural child). Whatever our later doctrinal take or attempt at expanding the past-tense of begotten - I just love the KJV's begat, I don't know why! - Scripturally we find ourselves more at home temporally and conceptually.

But if I am to nurture the concept of a big God, I need to get more comfortable with his surpassing my human limitations, right? Much is said and now written about "mystery" arguments of doctrine. What I retain is that to believe something you have to understand it and find it reasonable at least to some degree in order to believe in its truthfulness. Of course some of these "mysteries" are directly in the authoritative texts themselves (I am sure not all of those would seem mysterious to the original beneficiaries of the writings). But the greatest mysteries are not located there, they are unashamedly standing at the heart of the Nicean 4th Century Trinitarian declarations (i.e. not Tertullian, or other Logos theologians), the 5th Century's hypostatic union of Christ and perhaps finally in the two-willed Christ dyothelite (culminating as Holmes wholeheartedly reaffirms, in agreement of it not being the son of God praying in Gethsemane, for there is but one divine will).

So why does the doctrinal language attempt this language-leap? Why not just come up with their own jargon?
Well they do come up with a lot of jargon actually, as some of the previous paragraph should show. But not all. The leap in tense of beget, which is a scriptural word, is to do with this development of son of god to God the Son, son of God the Father (Nicea), while hanging on to the authority of scripture's key idea of begetting - although I might one day have more experience to debate the successfulness of that "hanging on" (not yet). Begetting usually means causing, and is at least close in meaning. But it is very difficult to hold out that both Jesus is eternal and that in the past at some point he was caused, was begotten, etc., even if that is what the Bible says (another less-known one, although this is more anecdotal really, is that Jesus is always said to have loved us, i.e. love through action at the cross). The way around this of course is to choose a "more suitable" tense that connects us better - although in good and right recognition of God's ineffability, not perfectly - to the deeper connections within the "Godhead" that unlock us slightly from time. Assumption: the Scriptures are perfect, holy, infallible but a bit too time-locked.

A trinitarian conclusion: perhaps we can humanly make progress to comprehending a triune God's timeless begetting, being begotten, sending and proceeding, when we think in terms of non-specific effect. So in this line of thinking, we might just possibly be able to conceive of the effect of fathership and sonship... (and spiritship!) to be mutually, permanently and effectively caused. "Sustained" still seems closer to me, though.

Time-locked language (Part 1)

Source.

Generate.

Spirate.

Proceed.

Cause.

...................Beget. 

?

In today's post, I am going to somewhat vaguely, air something of a theological frustration of mine. This frustration is more felt against theologians than God, and more aimed at ancient theologians than recent ones, which should be a big clue to me to go and do some more homework. The frustration is based on:

a. the way causing works in most (if not all) instances in human languages - I argue it is semantically time-locked, or if not completely time-locked, limited to general non-specific effects, and effects which are inherently about change.
b. the way in which the tenses shift from scripture to doctrine (i.e. Jesus was begotten by the Father in scripture, and the Father begets [eternally generates] the Son, in doctrinal parlance).

Because a. took me longer to write than I initially thought, I will post b. separately.

A Time-locked causation

When we try, sometimes I get the impression of "try desperately", to make the doctrinal ideas fit Scripture and the Scripture the doctrinal ideas (Church fathers), or indeed to make the Scriptures agree with one another within the model of the doctrine (Holmes), we forget, or we forgot, something that is very basic indeed. The above words (cause, generate, beget, etc.) cannot be used, or only very rarely used, in describing the eternal or permanent. In my two languages of English and French, these words are inseparable from the notions of time and movement. Of course, that may not be the case in Greek, I need to check, but needless to say, I anticipate issues there also for the simple reason that we have chosen these words as apt and suited for translation purposes. This is why my questions to a fictive, English-speaking, 4th-century pro-Nicene theologian might be: "what does it mean to cause something that has always existed?" "What is there left in the word 'cause' once you remove time from its very essence?" 

And finally: "Please, would you stop misreading (Holmes' word, not mine) Isaiah 53:8?!"

As Christians, we do not believe that any human language is divine, in the sense, for example, that Muslims believe the Arabic language comes directly from Allah. Greek is just Greek, and so on, developed necessarily by humans to express and comprehend their needs and lives. When rain falls and the sun shines and the seeds are sown, and the gods smile, the crops grow. They were not, and now they are. Causation. There is little in causing-vocabulary that lends itself to describing an eternal or permanent action.

This said, I would first like to take a moment to try very hard and disprove my own objection to be sure. Look at two natural examples with me that may seem to create "mind space" for this kind of perpetual causation, examples that would be valid for people back then as they area now: first the moon, then the sun.

1. The moon's gravitational effect

We cannot be sure what people presumed about the phenomena of tides, but for the sake of this article let us assume that some kind of causal connection was made between the location of the moon the tide. Does the moon perpetually cause tides? Yes I think for the sake of this counter-argument, we could say it does. But let us be clear here, we are not saying that one huge lump of water is produced or removed over and over, all we can say is that this phenomenon is perpetually caused by the position of the moon. A permanent effect. So the moon's gravity on our oceans helps us provide a little leg-room on the perpetual side, while still absolutely being locked into movement.

2. Heat from the sun

Let's keep it astral. So does the sun's steady warmth (leaving aside seasons, weather fluctuations, day and night and everything else) provide us with more linguistic head space? Unlike the moon's gravitational effects on the ocean's movements, the heat we sense does not change, and yet this warmth is caused continuously, without it, we would freeze to death in an instant.
Here we certainly can discount 1st or 4th century notions of vibrating molecules, and their movement, besides that would just be getting a bit too theoretical! Well, what is warmth? Warmth is a sensation I feel after I have been feeling cold. So while there is change and time-lockedness there, we could move on to simply say the warmth of the sun is essential to life. The warmth of the sun (in combination with other factors), causes life. Continuously.

So having identified some room for this notion of perpetual causation from natural phenomena, we should note the following key points: 1) permanent causation examples seem fewer and are theoretical, i.e. no two actual tides are identical even in the same location, 2) the only permanent cause examples seem to be phenomenal change-inducing effects, i.e. the warmth of the sun helps cause the crops to grow. There is no specific thing or creature or person that is perpetually begotten or caused in our human languages.

So, as mentioned in the intro, I argue that causing is semantically time-locked, and where not completely time-locked, limited to general non-specific effects, and effects which represent change.

Update: Note that Zizioulas (Holmes, QFT, p13) strongly emphasises the Father's causing of the Trinity. Holmes qualifies this causation as something "free and personal, not something mechanical and fixed." The question and challenge raised for this article on time-locked language, is now to find something that is "free and personal" that can be caused in a non-time-dependant way. Can you think of anything?

I think I finally see a way through here in looking back at the Greek word, αἰτία, an old theological principle to which Zizioulas wants to remain loyal. In Strong's Greek NT 156 we have indeed something less mechanical. Here we speak of "guilt", responsibility, accusation, fault, grounds, reason. I cannot deny that this opens a quite different discussion in terms of NT authors' perspective around causation, however, it really must not be forgotten that this word is not used prior to the patristic period, that is hundreds of years AFTER the scriptures were written (it would seem particularly around the debates surrounding the Filioque clause, St Maximus the Confessor, and the 15th Century Council of Florence).

Stephen Holmes transcript

Trinitarian Action & Inseparable Operations

"One very broad answer in terms of what I think we are doing with the doctrine of the trinity, in terms of exegesis, you know there's this question that Fred touched on this morning, "is this doctrine biblical?", and Fred's answer was "yes it is if we take big enough chunks of the bible... I'm not sure that I fully agree with Fred there, I think in terms of the technically developed doctrine, I am not sure that you can get to certain bits of it just by doing exegesis, rather I think the way you get to it is by facing up to apparent contradictions in the biblical texts and trying to imagine the sorts of things that must be true, particularly about the divine life, in order for those apparent contradictions to not be contradictions for both texts to be true." 

53'00 PRAYER ON JESUS LIPS : "it seems to me that prayer is necessarily a human action, and so when we hear a prayer on Jesus' lips, we have to say well this is a specifically human action. The dyothelite interpretation of those passages which was declared orthodox: The clash of the wills here is not the clash between the Son and the Father because the son and the father have one will. It is the clash of the human will of Jesus with the single divine will. That is not what you get if you said I just want to exegete this text, but i do think it is a reasonable claim to say that if actually we try to make sense of the entire witness of scripture, to the being of the incarnate son, that you are going to need to say something quite like this eventually down the line and do things with that text that are not on the surface, in order to be able to confess its truth alongside the truth of other texts rather rather than picking which texts we believe and which texts we don't.”