How My Relationship to Christian Scripture is Changing

The title of this blog if the last three and a half years has been a good summary of its purpose: faith and scripture.

It is the connection between these two that make each of them so interesting and sustainable as a conduit for the faith community to frame their action and thought.

However, over this period I have traversed a number of physical and psychological changes that have taken me out of the mainstream church action and into a different kind of theological reflection. I only think it is fair to be honest with blog readers on an important shift I can sense occurring within me and despite my efforts to the contrary: these biblical texts that I find so fascinating I no longer approach from the faith perspective primarily. When I read them, I am asking historical questions first and foremost. It just seems to be how my brain has reprogrammed itself to process these texts for various reasons. Let's guess at why:

As I already mentioned, the first of these is probably human suffering. My issue is not the classic one of the existence of suffering, I think that would be far too tedious and unreliable a fallback strategy. But rather it is the way in which Christian scripture itself is interpreted on the painful area of suffering that is creating distance between me and God. It is supposed to be short-lived, God is supposed to alleviate it or be felt closer somehow through it and have a greater purpose at work through it, like maybe my sanctification or something. So I have gotten tired of placing my confidence in inspiring texts like Isaiah 58:8

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Or James 1:2-3

My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

Or Romans 5:3-4

... we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

"No," life experience is saying to me, "not necessarily."

Secondly, I think I got tired a while back as I exposed time after time how impartial apologetic exegesis of texts put a strain on a more reasonable and defensible Christianity. Over time this insatiable drive for truth and intolerance of undisclosed bias I think had a negative impact on my faith experience.

Thirdly, in addition to the experiential deficit, I don't know how to trust the Scriptures as an accessible window to the heart of God, on controversial areas of ethics (contradictions between contexts) and conflicting details between multiple accounts of the same historical event (internal contradictions). Here my defense mechanism is the same as ever: stop worrying too much about what I think about this, and try to unpack how this event was understood and integrated into the early faith community experience of God. On this point I will soon be asking blog readers in particular to honestly engage with this thought process as you, with me, try to understand the New Testament villain of Judas Iscariot according to its contrasting accounts.

A fourth factor takes us back a couple of years - I guess I am going in reverse order - a realisation that I was in a small minority of persons who rejected (and continue to reject) a modalistic view of Christ in which the centre was basically Christ, with the Holy Spirit and the Father really just emanations of Him. By rejecting a first century triune God, I found this new model that seemed to have dumped itself on my lap (the "Triune Hub" Jewish mutation) placed me in an even tinier minority, one so small that I was no longer in close relationship with anyone else who shared this perspective or these concerns.

So how do I go on? I continue to be highly motivated to dig around the texts (and their translations) historically, seek to bless the faith community with the greatest degree of honesty I am capable of offering, and continue to experience a degree of hope and gratitude in the church tradition that I am glad to be a part of. It is interesting to  me that although personal faith has taken a real knock, I still pray, sometimes even spontaneously worship. If someone wanted to pray with me, I'd love that, especially if it brings the deep level connection prayer can give and not intercessory. Praying for healing is trickier and my disillusionments and alienation are readily awakened. I may take the time to reflect on the blog soon about this sensitive issue.

Back soon!
John

Sample Chapter is out!

I have no idea how much time I have spent crafting this chapter. I feel like I have written it several times over the last couple of years!

This opening chapter of my book manuscript introduces a new combination of already established theological concepts. It applies hermeneutic principles of interpretation to the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity, thus opening a middle ground between "Triune God advocacy" and Biblical Unitarianism and, I hope, increase the opportunities for productive dialogue between these traditionally-opposed schools.

This, the opening chapter, is a very personal one.

Particular credit goes to Marc Gallagher who gave me some fantastic constructive criticism and advice on it a few months ago, although quite a number have contributed in various ways to the development of the thesis of this book, which I extract here from the uploaded chapter:

First century Christian faith did indeed seem to have – at least in the more successful strands of Christianity of the time – an all-new trinitarian hub, and indeed did not yet feature a tri-personal God. The latter would be the expression and safeguarding of the former. That is the thesis of this book: the Triune God is the fourth-century expression and safeguarding of the first-century triune faith.

Please read or download the chapter in full here.

As readers may have learned already from a previous post, I haven't had much luck with my first three publishers, so until the book situation changes, I will tend to prioritise my other goals via this blog. Hopefully, folks might at some point realise that the Triune Hub hypothesis could give new leverage and clarity to the trinitarian enterprise. If that does happen, I may not even be the best person to publish on it. I'm more committed to getting a more accurate perspective of the past and improving the state of Christian apologetics to mind too much, although I have wondered and prayed about a partnership. But this chapter remains one of my most nurtured, careful and developed pieces I have written to date, so if you would like to read it I'd love to hear your feedback.

Blessings.

How does your interpretation help you understand yourself more?

Yesterday we began to draw some of the connections between Paul Ricoeur's work and the methodologies underlying some of the historical quests for the Trinity. I attempted this in both English and French, which was a big effort at over 2300 words in total, something I won't be able to maintain. It was also one of my least visited posts recently - possibly a coincidence, possibly English readers hadn't realised that the post was also in English, I don't know. Anyway, today I will keep it mainly in English with a couple of French summaries, using the same colour codings as yesterday. Citations will continue in both languages, the English being my own translation.

Aujourd'hui je me contenterai de faire la plupart de l'article en anglais, avec quelques remarques et citations en français.

Yesterday we saw Ricoeur distinguish two types of ontological inquiry: the short route, which I translated as "ontological comprehension", is very black and white. The longer route is more arduous and involves semantics. It does not attempt what I coined as "historical surgery", is more nuanced, personal, intentional and multi-faceted. I'm going to fast-forward a few pages now to arrive at a key citation that brings in the concept of symbolism, which is important when insisting, as I do, that the fourth-century discussions around the doctrine of God, despite the ontological packaging, were also deeply symbolic. Here's Ricoeur on p. 35:

I am calling a symbol any structure of meaning where a direct, primary, literal meaning also provides an indirect, secondary, figurative meaning behind it that can only be apprehended via the first. These two-layered structures constitute the hermeneutic scope ... I suggest we afford [the concept of interpretation] the possibility of the same layering as the symbol. Thus let us assert that interpretation is the mental task in which the hidden meaning is distilled from the apparent meaning and to deploy the various layers of meaning implied in the literal meaning.

J'appelle symbole toute structure de signification où un sens direct, primaire, littéral, désigne par surcroît un autre sens indirect, secondaire, figuré, qui ne peut être appréhendé qu'à travers le premier. Cette cironscription des expressions à double sens constitue proprement le champ herméneutique. Je propose de donner [au concept d'interprétation] même extension qu'au symbole; l'interprétation, dirons-nous, est le travail de pensée qui consiste à déchiffrer le sens caché dans le sens apparent, à déployer les niveaux de signification impliqués dans la signification littérale.

More dynamite! I've been saying this for a while, but the more we look at the Triune-God process - let's call it the "triunification", the intelligent minds that were involved in that process, the more improbable it gets that this was an illogical, unbiblical or crazed invention. Something I breezed over to get to this crucial quote was a very brief treatment of Edmund Husserl, factoring in personal intention. Husserl is focussed on phenomenology, which is this curious sub-world in philosophy that attempts to look at human experiences experientially without reference to metaphysics and theories. All this is very interesting, but where we still need to join some dots is by asking the following the question: can we consider an institution to be a person with intentionality? Chad McIntosh argues compellingly that we can as "corporate personalities", provided we designate them as functional persons and not "intrinsicist" persons. Like most intrinsic persons, these corporate personalities meet the conditions first of agency....:

An agent is anything that has representational states about how reality is, motivational states
about how it wants reality to be, and the ability to rationally process and act on those states so as
to attempt to get reality to fit its desires. Insects, animals, men and even robots may all qualify as
agents on this account. Houseplants, rocks, stuffed animals, and screwdrivers do not.
That groups, too, can be agents in this sense is standard fare among many philosophers.
...
Once it is recognised that groups can meet conditions of agency, it is natural to consider next
whether they might meet conditions sufficient for personhood, such as being morally
responsible, having free will, and having a first-person perspective. The most travelled route from
group agency to group personhood is via the first of these, moral responsibility.
(CA McIntosh, God of the Groups, p. 2)

Je fais le lien entre Ricoeur et McIntosh, puisque cela me permet de proposer que les collectivités d'évêques qui sont représentées par les documents historiques des concils écuméniques sont, à mon sens, dotées des conditions nécessaires pour l'herméneutique dans le sens où il y a une signification apparente et aussi des significations cachées à en déchiffrer. 

And McIntosh will indeed conclude that such an "adoption" into personhood is not only possible but full, along with some notable philosophical support. All that is relevant to establish a development that I want to make from Ricoeur's insistence that hermeneutics is about teasing out the hidden layers of meaning behind the more literal or apparent meaning. Since we are such social creatures, preprogrammed to work in social structures, we have to step beyond a simple individual's examination of an ancient-yet-meaningful text. The individual's focus and drive are part of a wider-held concern (or lack thereof as perceived by the individual), but so also are the Biblical texts themselves and the later great ecumenical councils, which especially need to be seen as interpretative in the sense brought to us by Ricoeur, and as a collective in the sense brought to us by McIntosh.

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 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.

Let's return to Ricoeur, who wants to widen our understanding of interpretation not just as something we do with the knowledge that we have, but as interwoven into the fabric of our being, our deep semantic field of reference out of which we derive our meaning - albeit still on an individual level. Here on p. 40, our author is having another go at Dilthey's hermeneutic problem we examined yesterday:

The exegete can appropriate the meaning of an outsider, she wants to make it her own...; it's then the expansion of her understanding of herself that she is pursuing via the understanding of the other. All hermeneutics are thus, be it explicitly or implicitly, understanding of oneself via understanding the other.

L'exegète peut s'approprier le sens: d'étranger, il veut le rendre propre...; c'est donc l'agrandissement de la propre compréhension de soi-même qu'il poursuit à travers la compréhension de l'autre. Toute herméneutique est ainsi, explicitement ou implicitement compréhension de soi-même par le détour de la compréhension de l'autre.

So, next time you want to understand "what Paul was really saying", you are really trying to understand more of who you are via that understanding - amazing, huh? Would you agree? What about the "great" ecumenical councils - what do you see the purposes and meanings are behind the scenes? Think beyond controversy A, B or C - unless you can answer why those controversies might have shed light on some deeper concern. We need to watch carefully. Let's ask a new question: not what, but who does the Church understand herself to be and how does she understand herself better through her "triunification" of God? That's probably enough to chew on for tonight :)

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!

Do God and Christ love the Holy Spirit?

Perhaps the greatest issue for Social Trinitarians with respect to the Holy Spirit is "his" personhood. Generally, in defence of this personhood, they point to passages that do indeed seem to imply a certain someone, capable of emotion and saying things, for example. These occasional references to which these Trinitarians point are - initially - suggestive of personhood, for sure. To my mind, however, there are two significant "buts", and I think Pastor Finnegan touches on the first:

1. The rarity of the suggestive occurrences relative to the more impersonal and dissuasive ones.

2. The absence of love evidenced between the Father or Son and the (or their) Spirit.

It is on this second point that I have not yet found significant concern within the Trinitarian literature - but perhaps with good reason. Social Trinitarians in particular should have an issue here. They claim that these three literal persons are bound together in a profound and infinite love that permits a oneness appropriate to singular pronouns. But there is a problem here, well and truly shoved under the carpet – where is the love of the Father or of the Son for his (or their) Spirit in the Bible?

Since the initial discussion generated by this post on the trinities facebook page, it has been argued defensively, and perhaps predictably, that the Spirit must be a distinct person because of the personal language with which this Spirit is sometimes associated. There are assumptions underlying this sort of approach that I think can be outlined as follows:

·        The opposing team (me) believes that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force (or just an impersonal force)

·        Personal language of the Holy Spirit obliterates such crazy ideas.

I remain open. I honestly don't mind if the Holy Spirit has full personhood in the same sense as the Father and the Son. I think that would be pretty cool and I find the social Trinitarian rhetoric both captivating and inspiring. If, however, there is a reason why there is no Biblical evidence for HS personhood in the inter-divine-persons relations, then the empowering presence of the highly personal God (and Son) at work in people's lives could still be personal. For me, that would remain inspiring and captivating.

Thus for Social Trinitarians, this should amount to a serious problem. They claim that Trinity is a most beautiful and delicate "dance" of humble love and collaboration. But it is not enough to point to a few potential occurrences of Holy Spirit personhood to justify the love dance. In order to fill a seemingly gaping hole in Social Trinitarian theology, solid evidence needs to be provided for love of the Father and Son for the Spirit. Where is that evidence?

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.

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?!

There is hope for the NIV! A quick peak at Titus 2:13

I had a period where I started to really like the NASB, and also at times the NET Bible translations. You know what they say, it is always worth checking another translation. Well, if you are reading the older translation of the NIV then it is also worth checking the updated one, I think around 2011 for the full Bible. The version many evangelicals were reading in the 80s and 90s, and still many today, has some subtle but very significant differences. There is a very notable one I spotted in Hebrews 1, where we shift from Jesus being made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour and everything put under his feet, to MANKIND being made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour and everything put under our feet. That might seem like a big jump, but that is simply what is now understood to be in the original Greek. Too much had been made of the title "son of man", and all the glory, honour and authority so naturally seeming like something Jesus should have.

But the passage that is bouncing around my brain right now is from Titus 2:10-13. Up until now, I had been thinking that Titus was a really special book in terms of Christology, because my study was showing it to consistently assume that Jesus simply was the highest form of deity there could be. Jesus is God for the Titus writer. I was looking forward to writing a special section about it. Until I stumbled over a very significant change from old NIV, which follows the KJV, to new NIV.

Old NIV:
...while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us...

New NIV:
...while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us...

Can you see why this update is significant? It is actually significant on two levels, both of which I think are of great importance.

Firstly, in terms of my quest for the biblical justification of the fourth-century doctrine of the Triune God as something more than an "interpretation", I thought I had a solid "blue" text here, that is to say suggestive and compatible with later developments. It is now possible from the current NIV rendering - which I note to be now the mainstream reading - to understand the original passage differently, that Jesus is the glory of God that is to appear. But I suspect it is even more than that, and I am not alone. Literally the Greek says:

awaiting the blessed hope and [the] appearing of the glory of the great God and Saviour of us Christ Jesus.

Huther refers for proof to Buttman and Wince, perhaps affirming essentially that the "—" (dash) after "hope" is OK, because it is impossible to treat "the hope" and the "appearing" as one subject. Jesus is the glory of our great God. So the second [the] is justified, and the appearance of Christ Jesus is also the blessed hope.

This update from NIV is also significant for me on a second level. I feel very encouraged that while theological commitments will always have their influence on translators (and that can historically be shown without a shred of doubt), that this discipline with regard to bible translation and textual criticism is showing true advances toward neutrality, thus better translations, even at the cost of trinitarian proof texts! I admire that.

Before closing, I should also note that quite a few scholars seem to also keep open the possibility of another older interpretation, from a point of view of grammatical and author consistency, that the sentence requires in English the insertion of a second "our", which means that while Christ and God are distinguished, the eagerly awaited glory is shared and non-personified, as opposed to the previous interpretation. Suffice it to say that the chances of the Titus-writer meaning Titus to understand that Jesus just is God here seem to me slim according to current textual scholarship.

Acts 2 and the quest for the tri-personal God

My survey is making good progress and the results continue to intrigue me. It generally makes little sense revealing them as I go along as the  whole point is to try and appraise the big picture. However, as an exception, this evening, I want to peek into Acts Chapter 2, which many believers like me have heard a lot. This is mainstream, often-visited Scripture, if you know what I mean.

Remember that my project is to identify texts that seem to pave the way for something that will culminate in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381, where the Father, Son and Spirit are all equally God, consubstantial and co-eternal. Where I get (or others have gotten) any whiff of that possibility, the passage gets noted according to a whole bunch of different criteria. I call these texts "suggestive". On the other hand, where I come across those kinds of texts that seem very alien to those fourth century descriptions of God, I note those also; I call these "dissuasive". Acts 2 is one of the most dissuasive chapters of the New Testament I have come across thus far. Here it is with my bolding:

22‘Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. ....

30But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. 31Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. 33Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear....

36‘Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’

This is a highly dissuasive passage. I have a feeling Acts is going to be quite a dissuasive book actually.

[FYI I am no longer working on the on-line version of my survey as it is considerably slower than using offline tools, apologies]