John 8:58, Dale Tuggy takes on my questions on John 8 (iii)

Dale Tuggy has examined on his Trinities podcast the question of pre-existence, before looking at various scholars' responses to John 8:58, especially that of Thomas Belsham in episode 63. This prompted me to ask a question about when the current interpretation came about, and this "got me started on a quest", says Tuggy. He thus commits his 66th episode to probing the implied connections we often hear surrounding readings of John 8:58 from the pulpit and in popular Christian literature. This also follows on from two other posts on my blog, part 1 and part 2. Here is part 3, sorry it is a bit long and notey. There will also be a small extra post on the John 8:59, which was mentioned at the end of the podcast, and I feel less related to my original question, but still worth a separate mention.

What I found really insightful was the picture Tuggy sketched of the "Logos theologians" (2nd-3rd centuries, pre-Nicea) and the way he interacts with the next question of listener, "Sarah", when she quotes an interesting passage in Justin Martyr's writings (First Apology), recounting the Son of God speaking on God's behalf, as both "an angel and an apostle": an angel of God spake to Moses. the son of God, who is called both angel and apostle. After this, Irenaeus focuses in on the question of Jesus' pre-existence, and does use John 8:58 to emphasise this point.

Reminder: Dr Dustin Smith showed how it was ancient Jewish custom to talk about future events in the past tense that are determined in the mind and heart of God. We are also reminded that we all know this and apply this rule almost unconsciously to the Old Testament prophecies, e.g. He WAS PIERCED for our transgressions.

The logos theory came first. It was quite controversial. "Of course, this is not what the gospel of John is saying at all, there is no direct interaction between Jesus and Abraham recorded there", says Tuggy.
God now (in the 2nd and 3rd centuries) is seen to interact with creation through a go-between, none other than the Logos in John 1, a "pre-human" Jesus. Philo of Alexandria had a very transcendent view of God, and had clear platonic views. In the Scriptures that describe "god" being seen, these sightings had to be Jesus, as no-one can see God and live. So the Logos theologians were responsible for developing a theology first of indirect interaction of the transcendent God through his pre-existent son. (me: Remember how important Proverbs 8 was as a proof-text for the pro-Nicene movement, but which includes in v21: The LORD possessed/fathered/created me [wisdom] at the beginning of his work(s) - some of the Logos theologians seem to take this to mean Jesus was created first, but still a very long time ago).

So Irenaeus, Origen, and others begin to refer to this verse as support for the pre-existence of Christ. But the interesting point is what they are attempting to draw from this verse. Is it the twofold argument of both Jesus pre-existing and Jesus simply is Yahweh, doing "I AM" wordplay? (remember, we are not assuming that John himself intended any of this, although I suspect Bart Ehrman might disagree - since he claims very different christologies between the gospel writers)

1. I am God myself.
2. I have a timeless existence, a divine attribute, implying that I am god myself
3. I am implying that I have existed a long time, since before Abraham.

Novation is another early theologian, from the mid 200s, and he examined the idea of immortality for men, deification of man from Christ (not even "via"). When he refers to John 8:58 he is definitely affirming that Christ pre-existed, but he implies more than that, providing early arguments for Christ's two natures.
In fact, quite a lot of what he says sounds a bit like he is Trinitarian, but when you get to the end of Novatian's work, you realise that still, the one true God is the Father. For him, however, Jesus was
i) foreknown and
ii) divine and
iii) has two natures.

I gather from Dale that Novation was writing in Latin, and Latin apparently does not have or did not have the word "the", hence the ambiguity around "deus" (God/divine).

(Here I think Dale makes a bit of a mistake, though, or at least I am not at all sure he can so casually state comprehensible use of the definite article in Koine Greek. I hope one day to blog on this serious textual problem!)

Surprising omissions for such a "clear" text: The Arian controversy makes no reference to John 8:58, nor does Augustin On the Trinity, or the City of God, nor does Hansen's Search for the Christian doctrine of God, the best history resource of the Nicene controversy.

Finally finds a text from a 7th century forgery claiming to be written by Matthew, but that is a bit of a half-funny aside that Dale includes.

John Calvin's commentary, based on Chrisostoms Homily 55 (AD 355 - 4??). Like Novation, it attempts to prove that Jesus is divine and has eternal existence, two natures.

Augustin, bishop of Hippo: Before Abraham, I am - not "was". "Was" and "will be" he knows not. "From eternity begotten". "This his name he told to Moses, You shall say to them he that IS has sent me to you." Augustin is a clear Trinitarian, on the heels of Nicea.

Dale's conclusion: So clearly by the early 400s, when Augustin is making his comments about John and 1st John, from that time on it's part of catholic tradition to see Jesus not merely alluding to the statement of God to Moses, but really asserting that he has eternal existence and thereby asserting that he is fully divine. Is this a discovery?

For Dale this is a classic case of Eisegesis, reading into it what you want to find there rather than drawing out what is actually there, expounding what the author actually meant.

The last part of this podcast I felt strayed back to more contemporary analysis that would with retrospect be better placed, perhaps, in the Belcham episode 63, but it is relevant to our interpretations of John 8:59. Let's look at that quickly in the next post.

John 8:58, Dale Tuggy takes on my questions (i)

My apologies for the break. I have been doing some travelling and, perhaps most significantly, my foot, which has been injured for a long time, has now started to show some signs of improvement, meaning I am doing some running and have even less time for theologising!

For anybody who has been listening to the Trinities podcast for the last couple of weeks, you will probably have noticed that my question to Professor Dale Tuggy was read in episode 64 of the Trinities podcast founder, has kinda grabbed his attention. The question went like this:

Dear Dale,

Thanks for your great podcast, we continue to enjoy it over here in Marseille, France!

I have gone through in some detail the book authored by your previous interviewee, Stephen Holmes, and as I have been listening to the recent shows on pre-existence, it started dawning on me that I do not have a clue when John 8:58 became significant. This evening I went to the back of Dr Holmes book where there is the biblical reference section, and the verse does not seem even to be mentioned in the entire book.

So can you please help us understand more particularly when you consider this became a key text for Trinitarian theology, and the context?

Final question: what is the significance in your view if we remove 7:53-8:11, and just read through from 7:52 to 8:12?

Blessings and thanks

In the first week, Dale tackled the second question first. Removing the questioned passage of 7:53-8:11 from the field of view strengthens the interpretation that the "I am he" (ἐγὼ εἰμί) repetitions are references to Jesus' messiahship. (Of course, I am not saying by this that a case cannot or should not be made for the Messiah's divinity also, I always want to reassure anyone reading this of that, but I do want believers to keep their brains switched on and aware about the interpretive tools we use to read scriptures.) 

What Dale should have added, I think, was to state what I think textual scholars do say about 7:53-8:11. If we left things as he left it, then we might question the passage's entitlement to simply exist in the canon at all. My understanding - but I would need to check - is that while scholars agree that this chunk was very unlikely to be located where it has come to sit now (and admittedly for a very long time), it could very well be an authentic writing or story from the apostolic era, even by the same author as the gospel of John. But this verse of John 7:53 therefore becomes a key deterrent and distraction to us trying to understand what Jesus and John meant in John 8:58, and it seems so lowly and inconspicuous:

"THEN THEY ALL WENT HOME"

Then you get the [amazing] and possibly-non-original story of the woman caught in adultery.

Then you get Jesus picking up the same conversation he left off in 7:52. Let us assume what the NIV text notes say is true, also to convince you I am not making this up!

The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53 – 8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.

So for the sake of argument I think we can be very, very sure that the original gospel did not have everyone simply "going home" at this point in John's gospel. I am also very struck by how naturally the passage flows when we omit this section - try skipping it and see what you think. 

So I agree with Tuggy's interpretation here, except that I am not yet as ready as he is to simply say that in the wider context of what John wants to stress about Jesus is "only" or "simply" that Jesus is the promised Messiah, even if I do feel that John 20:30-31 makes a pretty explicite and clear case for John's general purposes.

Just another parting shot: do you think it is legitimate to consider that the authorities considered stoning a suitable punishment for a wide range of serious sin, or insult to the establishment?

I will blog about the other part of my question to Dale in a separate post.

Salvation as deification

Summary and response to Trinities Episode 59.

2nd century church fathers, like Irenaeus, would not have been confused about the one true God and deified people (yes, apparently they said this, i.e. God became man so that men could become gods, etc. just start typing this into google and it will finish the search for you!). Mosser informs us this is because of the origins of the word theos. The way he describes original usage if this word in anquity reminds me very much if the colloquial "divine" used now (e.g. this glorious pudding).

Von Harnack and Albrecht Ritschl in the 19th century want to point the finger at the eastern orthodox church as having spoilt the simple message of Jesus, of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man by having added a deification salvation principle. This is refused by Mosser, who see this deification principle present also in Catholicism and Protestantism. Mosser claims that Von Harnack and Ritschl - for their own polemical reasons - subverted whole swathes of church history. So deification suddenly became conspicuously absent from the west's history, even though Mosser affirms it is present in lots of western church writers in history before then.

Some anabaptists (16th century, around the time of the reformation), Priestley, Newton, also at this time reject the dogmas of the incarnation and the trinity, as they appeared more to be based on Greek philosophical ideas, especially those of Plato.

Hornack and Ritchel realised however you cannot argue the trinity and incarnation dogma solely as taken from Greek philosophy. They realised that the early (pre-nicene) Church fathers' theology of salvation, which includes deification in the sense incorruptible,  glorious, eternal, etc, by grace through the work and person of Jesus Christ, requires that the deifying (saving) one, Jesus, must himself be divine in his nature and not by participation in and grace of another. Hornack: by faith alone, full revelation begun by Augustine. Completing the unfinished project of the reformation.

Plato: imitation and union with God as a goal for humankind.  Theology and Christology, therefore, argue Von Harnack and Ritschl, had to support this pagan preparation.

Hornack key message: Hellenisation of Christianity happened when 2nd century church fathers adopted soteriology of deification which then will eventually lead to the doctrines of the incarnation and the trinity.

They see this as REPLACING justification by faith alone. Deification goes head to head with justification by faith, hence our subject Deification, for Von Harnack,  as oposed to justification by faith.

Augustine has some deification; however for Von Harnack, Augustine brings deification to an end in the west. From then on, any variation Augustine's .... [fragment]

Eastern orthodox say yea! Migrated Russian theologians in Paris came across the accusations and say that the western church's denial of deification is a sign of the west's apostasy, on biblical grounds. But no one stopped to check to see if the West really had abandoned deification as Hornack was saying, because he was so influential.

Jesus participates in the Divine. Tuggy adds: "hierarchy of participation", and agreed that there this is [hellenistic?] influence. But they use the language and draw from it along with biblical passages Eph 5:1. Gen 1. 2 Peter 1:4.

Response. 
1. I have been hearing Von Harnack's name mentioned a lot and it has been great to see more of his perspective and influence in this week's trinities podcast. I am particularly grateful as it seems like a lot of the work on the build up to Nicea 325 and Constantinople 381, it is just loose, speculative and unsatisfying. Von Harnack, and apparently Ritchel, may not be right in their hypothesis, but at least we seem to have something a bit more credible. In terms of contemporary influence at the turn of the last century (19th to 20th), he was the most influential scholar, not just theologian. He wrote 900 publications in his life!

2. I loved this episode because it is not just theological but also historical. I think that is why I found Holmes' book so enlightening.

3. I also want to underline the brief mention of the anabaptists in the 16th century. Stephen Holmes is very keen to point out consensus in time (save the last century) and east to west. He says that all traditions, East and West, pre and post reformation, accept the doctrine of the trinity.  However, it is interesting to note that this was not the case at the time of the reformation, there were fresh objections. What can be said is that the prevailing church view was pro-trinity. There is a little debate over one of the reformists clarity however, I think it was Calvin,  I need to to check it out.

Swinburne in the Tuggy hot-seat: there is no "it" when it comes even to mainstream ideas on the trinity.

Please listen here.

"The father doesn't choose to bring about the son, the father would not exist if he did not bring about the son, and so they are both necessary beings..."

"We are a voluntary act. We not exist necessarily."

One of Swinburne's most well-known arguments is that God should necessarily be three.

"...because it's not necessary for the realisation of perfect love to have a fourth being, of course it might be a good thing, but that fourth being does not necessarily exist but as a voluntary act... any fourth being like this that had that divine characteristics wouldn't be created necessarily with the essence of God the Father, and anything that is created voluntarily is not God."

Swinburne's ideas on God's oneness appear to evolve around them being totally cooperative, everything being backed by all three of them, that seems enough...

"...now that big word with a capital "G", you can use it as a synonym for divines persons, but more naturally as a collective, one power which makes the world. So there is a central oneness. The paradoxical nature of this view is often accentuated by the translations of the Greek creeds into the English language, the Greek word Theos, can be used in 2 divine senses, a divine being, and also the ultimate God, the One and Only.

When we say the creed: I believe in one God. Collective.

"God from God". Theos has these 2 meanings in Greek. Less paradoxical in Greek than it is in English, where in English we suppose that this idea that one meaning to denote a single object. The paradox is because there is not the flexibility of use as there is in Greek."

Let us respond.

Swinburne follows closely some of the logic put out by the early theologians (I have too dappy a memory at this point to name them) who point out that for the Son to have been created at a certain point of time, be that at Christmas, just after creation or just before creation, whenever, then to talk about a time when the son was not is also to state that there is a time when God was not Father, and therefore God fundamentally changed in his nature, something that God can most certainly not do.

Jesus, or rather the Divine Son of God [the Father], was (and is?) necessarily caused by the father; together they necessarily spirate the Spirit. Being three was and is not an optional state of affairs because God is fundamentally good and loving. Being "just" one, is incompatible, in Swinburne's view, with a life of generous love: he uses the emotive word, "solitude". Being two would never have been a possible state of affairs either because, if we were to take the picture of a human couple, their love must benefit another, otherwise it is selfish love, ultimately benefiting oneself. So the third is necessary, and hence the trinity of divine selves.

Tuggy does not want a long debate in his interviews and always moves on quickly, but were he to have poked deeper, he would have no doubt asked some of the same questions he puts out in the episode commenting Ravi Zachariah's talks (some committed, middle-of-the-road trinitarians, have confessed to me that Tuggy totally blew Ravi Zachariah out of the water on this episode, and it remains perhaps one of the strongest ones to date - check it out). His question about the necessity of being three to be a perfectly loving being is very simply: why? He argues convincingly that God would not necessarily have to be three in order to be perfectly loving. But where I find Swinburne decidedly unconvincing here is what seems to be a very human appeal to understanding God in terms of the human family. Is it truly loving to have one and only one child? If you were to ask a social worker, teacher, family counsellor, etc., what they thought about that model, leaving to one side for a moment countless millions of Chinese parents, they might not so happily tick that box.

To sum up, Swinburne's three-self view actually seems to me to be quite extreme in the three-self trinitarian camp (or sub-camp!). It seems that his comments of "three gods" as misleading is mainly based on the way that would have been misconstrued in a context that saw many gods in a competing and uncoordinated way. But basically, besides these misunderstandings, he appears to be very comfortable with the idea of three perfectly harmonious gods.

Most curiously, and even slightly alarmingly for such an acclaimed theologian as Swinburne, he also seems to think that his social trinity perspective is not a recent development from the original creedal positions, but simply restating what they were already saying in a language that has a lot less flexibility than the Greek the creeds were written in. After having drenching myself in Holmes' thought on this, it seems a problematic claim in the face of their insistence on divine simplicity.

Finally to conclude then, it is indeed extraordinary, isn't it?, that we can have two such radically differing views within this creedal heritage we share. We really should think again when we hear ourselves or others referring to THE doctrine of the trinity, or "it". There is no "it" when it comes even to mainstream ideas on the trinity.

This week's trinities podcast has prodded me into doing a post some time soon on the whole project of using words like "cause", "beget", "generate", etc. to describe the life and dependencies in the "godhead". But it would be good to separate that from this response to Richard Swinburne.