two scholars on the concept of monotheism (Dale)

Nov 272011
 

At the blog The Time Has Been Shortened, interviews with Dr. Nathan MacDonald and Dr. Michael S. Heiser.

I read most of MacDonald’s Deuteronomy and the Meaning of ‘Monotheism’. I found it helpful, but had some fundamental disagreements with it. Those another time.

The two have very different views of the OT & the issue of monotheism. To oversimplfy, MacDonald thinks that for a long time, Jews were polytheistic, then they became monotheists of a sort and changed older polytheistic OT texts to fit their new views. In contrast, Heiser thinks that all along they believed YHWH to be unique, although many could be called “elohim.” This is a very interesting disagreement, but  I won’t join the fray here.

Just a couple of comments.

Yes, monotheism is the belief that there there exists exactly one god. This sounds silly to say, but this has been denied repeatedly as of late.

Contra MacDonald’s first answer in the interview, the only real unclarity in this is what counts as a god, i.e. the concept of godhood.

The important issue here is the idea of monotheism, not the word “monotheism.” Yes, it is a fairly recent term, but I would argue, a helpful one – at least, once we make clear what is meant by the term “god.”

Heiser says, 

I don’t care for the modern definition as someone who accepts the Judeo-Christian canon.

Eh… how would accepting the authority of the Bible tell you that “monotheism” is or is not a helpful term? Continue reading »

Prothero on Christianity, Jesus, and the Trinity (Dale)

Sep 272011
 

Stephen Prothero, of Boston University, is the rare professor who is to a household name and face. He’s been on all sorts of media, and is an able spokesman for the cause of religious literacy. Preach it!

His latest book, God is Not One, is possibly the best introduction to a variety of religious traditions for the general reader. It’s well-written, informative, humorous, apt at comparing religions, and I would say pretty fair. I recommend it overall. The book is worth it just for his bashing of the soft-headed pluralism that infects so many popular books on religion. (Ch.1)

Less positively, Prothero’s outlook on religion is colored in many ways by the fact that he is an ex-Christian, having been raised as a mainline church. He sports of whole range of attitudes I see as deriving from this, or from this plus our present intellectual scene. Also, it strikes me that his childhood faith he left behind was just that. In any case, he has a nice way of wearing his inclinations on his sleeve. An author should be opinionated.

Here I want to ask: Is Prothero both fair and accurate in how he presents Christian belief? He says:

…the Christianity… of my childhood… was all about the doctrine of the Incarnation, which to me was as mysterious as adult life in general. According to this core Christian teaching, at the fulcrum of world history God took on the form of a helpless baby, born of a frightened young woman and held in the rough hands of a carpenter. “What if God was one of us?” asks the Joan Osborne pop song. Christianity responds, “He was!” (p. 68)

Well, is.

Again, at one level,  Continue reading »

DANIEL WATERLAND ON “THE FATHER IS THE ONLY GOD” TEXTS – PART 2 (DALE)

Jul 162011
 

The Clarke-Waterland duel went on for many, many pages in several books, getting increasingly snippy.

Last time I said that I thought Waterland was a social-mysterian-trinitarian. But I’m not so sure about the “social” part! He’s very unclear on whether the “Persons” are selves. They’re different somethings, in any case. But in this series, I’m sticking to an exegetical issue.

Here are excerpts of Waterland’s second salvo about the “only God” texts.

[Clarke] had produced John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, which prove that the Father is styled, sometimes, the one God, or only true God; and that he is the God of the Jews, of Abraham, etc. I asked how those texts proved that the Son was not? You say… “very plainly… Can the Son of the God of Abraham (Acts 3:13) be himself that God of Abraham, who glorified his Son?” But why must you here talk of that God, as if it were in opposition to this God, supposing two Gods; that is, supposing the thing is question. …I tell you that this divine Person is not that divine Person, and yet both are one God… (A Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity in Waterland’s Vindications of Christ’s Divinity, 422-3, original italics, bold added, punctuation slightly modernized)

This is wheel-spinning. Clarke does, and Waterland does not take the passages in question to identity (assert to be numerically identical) the Father and Yahweh.

Clarke had asked whether Waterland thought that the term “Father” in these texts actually includes, i.e. refers to, the Son as well. Waterland clarifies, Continue reading »

Daniel Waterland on “The Father is the only God” texts – Part 1 (Dale)

Jul 142011
 

Daniel Waterland (1683-1740) was by all accounts the most important disputant of Samuel Clarke about the Trinity.

Waterland spent his career at Cambridge, where he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Vice-Chancellor, and also serving as a Chaplain to the King, and as an Anglican clergyman in a number of cities.

He had a good reputation, and was an energetic, but normally cool-headed controversial/polemical writer (aganist Clarke, and other other theological topics, against other respected men), and he gained somewhat of a reputation in Anglican circles as a defender of catholic orthodoxy.

Many, including himself, contemplating his becoming a bishop, but in 1740 he died after complications, seemingly, from surgeries on an ingrown toenail in one of his big toes! He was survived by his wife of 21 years. (His only children were his books.)

I’d describe Waterland’s views on the Trinity as social, with a liberal dose of negative mysterianism. Like Clarke, he insists that his is the ancient catholic view, and much of the dispute concerns pre-Nicene fathers. Like Clarke, he wants to stick to those fathers and to the Bible, and takes a dim view of medieval theology.

About the pre-Nicene catholic “fathers,” I’d say both Clarke and Waterland somewhat bend the material to their own ends (I mean, they tend to see those authors as supporting their view, and being perhaps more uniform than they were), but I think Waterland bends the materials more. In his view, catholics had always believed the Three to be “consubstantial” in a generic sense, yet which, somehow, together with their differences of origin, makes them but one god. Like Swinburne and Clarke, he agrees that the Father is uniquely the “font of divinity.” He continually hammers Clarke with the claim that there’s no middle ground between the one Creator and all creatures.

In this series, I’ll examine the way he deals with some favorite unitarian proof-texts, which, unitarians think plainly assert the numerical identity of the Father with the one true God, Yahweh. According to Waterland, these unitarians are making a mistake like the one I made.

You [i.e. Clarke] next cite John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, to prove, that the Father is sometimes styled the only true God; which is all that they prove. Continue reading »

David James on Trinity feuding (Dale)

Jul 072011
 

Recent experiences made me go back to look at a little gem of a book from 1780, which encapsulates much from the trinitarian-unitarian debates in England c. 1689-1780.

It is obvious that there were plenty of wordy hotheads back then too, and yet it was in some ways, because of the Enlightenment, less of a reason-hating era. So, there were many interesting, sometimes even mutually respectful arguments, and David James, a Baptist minister, had read most of them. And, he pulled this off without coming to hate any of those involved.

It’s a bit depressing how little has changed since then, except for the worse! Obfuscation and confusion abound, for many reasons, and the positions James clearly lays out are oftentimes not clearly distinguished in people’s minds. The book is a testament to plain speaking, brevity (102 pages!), real and not feigned modesty, and unpretentious reasoning.

Eventually, you find out what his view is. Put you have to read carefully for it, and it comes towards the end. He explains his fairly simple, scriptural grounds for rejecting the other views, but he rejects those views without trashing them or those who believe them.

In a way, he thinks that these theories make less of a practical difference to the Christian life than some suppose. (pp. 72-6) And he has an interesting Appendix on worship and idolatry. (77-102) In the end, he thinks that scripture is sufficient to guide Christian worship, and that Christians should be careful in going beyond what is written. (40, 102) Like many early modern Protestants, he’s wary of appeals to mystery, the memory being fresh of Catholics appealing to mystery in defense of transubstantiation. (49, 68)

Is it a perfect book? No. For my part, I’m not persuaded by all of his arguments, and he doesn’t consider all the possible views, or all the views which are out there nowadays. Still, it’s a worthy little book, and deserves to be read. Here are some of his words from near the start of the book:

It is well known, that the doctrine of the Trinity, from the fourth century to the present time, has been the occasion of much debate and enmity Continue reading »

The Evolution of my Views on the Trinity – Part 3 (Dale)

Feb 242011
 

As with the last post, I continue in a personal vein.

In 1989 I went away to Biola University. This was an exciting time in my life for many reasons.

I met my lovely wife (in freshman orientation!), traded my trombone (uncool) for an acoustic guitar (cool), moved to Southern California, got involved in John Wimber’s Vineyard church, and in the winter term of my freshman year, in January, I discovered Philosophy. There’s a lot I could say about all of this, but I’ll try to stick to things which are somehow relevant to my thinking about God and Jesus.We’ll get more theological as we go along. Continue reading »

You’re Foolin’ Yourself and You Don’t Believe It – Part 1 (Dale)

Jun 162010
 

I’ve been reading I Told Me So (review) by Gregg Ten Elshof, a USC PhD who who teaches and chairs the Philosophy Department at my undergraduate alma mater. He’s been thinking about this topic for a long time (part 2) and so far, I really like the book. It is clearly written, insightful, and he trains his guns on self-deceptions by Christians in particular. Some of it is directly relevant to things we’ve been discussing here.

One point he makes in chapter one is that we can easily deceive ourselves about what we believe. He gives the plausible example – many of us have actually known people like this – of a respectable, elderly Christian woman who believes that she believes all people to be equal in God’s eyes, and yet her behavior clearly shows that she considers black people inferior to white people. (pp. 18-19) It’s hard to admit you’re an  Continue reading »

SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – ROUND 5 – BURKE – Part 3 (DALE)

May 292010
 

Were there any “biblical unitarians”, or what I call humanitarian unitarians in the early church?

Buckle your seatbelts – this post isn’t a quickie.

First, to review – in this whole debate, Burke has argued that all the NT writers were humanitarians. But if this is so, one would expect there to be a bulk of humanitarian unitarians in the times immediately after the apostles. Here, as we saw last time, Bowman pounces. All the main 2nd century theologians, he urges are confused or near trinitarians. (Last time, I explained that this is a dubious play on the word “trinitarian”. My term for them is non-Arian subordinationists.) There’s not a trace, Bowman urges, of any 1st c. humanitarians – with the exception of some off-base heretical groups, like the Ebionites.

We’re talking about mainly the 100s CE here, going into the first half of the 200s. The general picture, as I see it, is this. Early in the century, we find the “apostolic fathers” basically echoing the Bible, increasingly including the NT (the NT canon was just starting to be settled on during this century). However, some of them seem to accept some kind of pre-existence for Christ (in God’s mind? or as a divine self alongside God?), and they’re often looser, more Hellenized in their use of “god” (so even though as in the NT the Father is the God of the Jews, the creator, Jesus is more frequently than in the NT called “our God” etc.) But clearly – no equally divine triad, no tripersonal God, and in most, no clear assertion of the eternality of the Son. In the second half of the century, starting with Justin Martyr, we find people expounding  a kind of subordinationism obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish Platonic theologian Continue reading »

Scotus on Richard of St. Victor? (Dale)

Apr 172010
 
Duns Scotus manuscript pic

They call me "The More Than Subtle Doctor." You can call me Johnnie Boy.

A postscript to our Richard series: I was reading the interesting and dense The Mysteries of Christianity, by 19th c. German Catholic theologian Joseph Scheeben, on Richard of St. Victor, and he says the following in a footnote:

Scotus states decisively that Richard of St. Victor adduces rationes necessariae for the Trinity, but not evidenter necessariae, because the principles from which he argues are not evident. Cf. III Sent., d.24, q.un., no.20; I Sent., d.42, q.un., no. 4; Reportata, prol., no. 18. (p. 29, fn. 11)

I assume that Scotus’s point is the Richard’s arguments are valid, but that each has at least one unknown premise (making them not real “proofs” or demonstrations). But I lack the time and Latin ability to chase down these quotes and translate them.

Anyone else care enough about this to do it?

If you’re not a trinities contributor, this could be a guest post opportunity. The task: read the above passages, translate the relevant bits, share the translated bits and the point of them with us here.

Is Scheeben correct in saying that these objections are decisive? If you’re interested, email me.

Negative Mysterianism Explained (Dale)

Apr 012010
 

It’s all so clear now!

:-)

Happy April Fools Day!

(A link for those confused about the subject line.)

On “godhead” (Dale)

Mar 092010
 

In popular Christian writing, as well as in theology, I’m constantly seeing the word “godhead” being used to mean something like “the three members of the Trinity, considered as a group”. An example context would be discussion “the eternal fellowship of the Godhead”.

Historically, this usage puzzles me. You never see this usage in ancient, medieval, or early modern material.In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen it in anything before 1980 – anyone out there have a counterexample?

head of a god statueHere’s what our friend the Oxford English Dictionary says about “godhead”:

1. The character or quality of being God or a god; divine nature or essence; deity.

b. As a title: Divine personality. Obs.

2. a. the Godhead: the Supreme Being; the Deity; = GOD n. 5. (Also rarely without article.)

b. A deity or divinity. = GOD n. 1. Now rare.   (Oxford English Dictionary online, “godhead”)

Basically, the OED acknowledges two usages of “godhead’ – (1) that which makes God divine – his quality of divinity, and (2) God. (2) is a natural extension of (1) – it’s a case of using a word for a part/aspect/component of the thing to stand for the whole thing – here, God. Note: the OED is out of date; it lacks the usage I noted at the start of this post. The new usage implies a divine community; the old (2) doesn’t – it is like referring to God using a sort of euphemistic title such as “Providence” or “Heaven”. Note that a “Godhead” in the recent usage is never a “him” but always a “they” or an “it” – this is the whole point of the new usage.

My hypothesis is this: Continue reading »

Quote: Loyola – tradition trumps sense perception (Dale)

Feb 242010
 
St. Loyola

(click for image credit)

St. Ignatius Loyola (1495-1556) founded the Jesuit order and authored a famous book of Spiritual Exercises. There, in a list of rules for correct belief, we have this:

Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls. Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed. (emphasis added)

What occasioned this rule was likely the objection, common among 16th-19th c. Protestants, to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, to the effect that we are more sure, on the basis of sense perception, that the consecrated wafer is just a wafer, than we are (based on Church testimony) that it is really the body of Jesus. God wants us, they would urge, to trust the senses he gave us, and believable miracle-claims let us do this.

I don’t see this sort of objection nowadays. I’m not sure why it went out of style.  In any case, Loyola’s answer is clear - tradition ought to trump even a clear, close-up sensory perception. One would think, then, that it would also trump a strong intuition of falsehood – as when a set of claims appears self-inconsistent.

But even Loyola’s sense claim seems unreasonable. Suppose, contrary to fact, that Mother Church had long, strongly asserted that uneaten, consecrated wafers never rot. Then, you’re cleaning up the church, and find a wafer than you remember the priest dropping during Mass some months ago. It is rotten – covered with bread mold. You can feel, smell, and see the rot. Surely, you can (and will) reasonably believe that the wafer is rotten.

Mysterians at work in Dallas (Dale)

Feb 192010
 
confused kid

Clearly, the instructor's work has been accomplished.

What I call positive mysterianism about the Trinity is the view that the doctrine, as best we can formulate it, is apparently contradictory.  Now many Christian philosophers resort to this in the end, but only after one or more elaborate attempts to spell the doctrine out in a coherent way. On the other hand, some jump more quickly for the claim, not really expanding on or interpreting the standard creedal formulas much at all. These are primarily who I have in mind when I use the label “positive mysterian”.

I ran across a striking version of this recently, in a blog post by theologian C. Michael Patton, who blogs at Parchment and Pen: a theology blog. In his interesting post, he says that all the typical analogies for the Trinity (shamrock, egg, water-ice-vapor, etc.) are useful only for showing what the Trinity doctrine is not.

This contrasts interestingly with what I call negative mysterians. Typically, and this holds for many of the Fathers, as well as for people like Brower and Rea nowadays, they hold that all these analogies are useful, at least when you pile together enough of them, for showing what the doctrine is. Individually, they are highly misleading, and only barely appropriate, but they seem to think that multiplying analogies like these results in our  achieving a minimal grasp of what is being claimed. Maybe they think the seeming inconsistency of the analogies sort of cancels out the misleading implications of each one considered alone.

In any case, in Patten’s view, the best you can do is to Continue reading »

Quote: Stephen Nye on disliking the clear as such (Dale)

Feb 222009
 
Please - it is more comfortable if I leave these on.

Please - it is more comfortable if I leave this on.

…I will not deny clear things concerning the Trinity, as some do, only because they are clear. I don’t think we may argue after this manner; “The Doctrine of the Trinity is a Mystery; your Account of it is no Mystery, therefore it is not the true Doctrine of the Trinity”: For it will be still mysterious enough to us, tho we do not reject what is clear, or certain, about it.

-Stephen Nye, Institutions, Corcerning the Holy Trinity, And the Manner of our Saviour’s Divinity, London, 1703, p. 114

A quote every, yes every theology student working on the Trinity or Incarnation should memorize (Dale)

Jan 212009
 

no-bologna

Respected Catholic philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso corrects some pervasive baloney about persons which theologians are still repeating, these 22 years later! The asterisk marks his footnote – this whole passage is an aside in a very rich paper of his. Out of politeness, I omit the author of the wrongheaded passage, and I’ve added some bold highlighting to the whole thing. We’ve been over some of this before, but I think Freddoso puts it all very, very well.

…the many contemporary philosophers who accept a basically Aristotelian (as opposed to, say, Lockean or Humean) account of substance will have little difficulty with the metaphysical analysis of a person as a suppositum [ultimate subject of properties] with an intellectual nature [with essential powers of freely willing and knowing]. In fact, such philosophers are likely to be bemused by the assertion, sometimes heard issuing from the mouths of modern theologians, that the medieval notion of a person has been preempted or superceded in “modern thought”. Continue reading »

Heretical “trinitarians” – evolution of a word (Dale)

Aug 082008
 

“trinitarians”… Fer it… or agin’ it?

Following up on the previous post – the word “trinitarian” may be an adjective or a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary lists four adjective meanings: (here’s my editing of relevant parts of their entry, emphasis added)

2. Theol. Relating to the Trinity; holding the doctrine of the Trinity (opp. to Unitarian). In early use, Trinitarian heretic, one holding heretical views as to the Trinity:

1656 BLOUNT Glossogr., Trinitarian hereticks, otherwise New Arians are those that deny the blessed Trinity, and all distinction of the Divine persons.

3. Forming a trinity; consisting of or involving three in one; triple, threefold.

Part of the usage we’re complaining about is 3 Continue reading »

Dealing with Apparent Contradictions: Part 8 – Rational Reinterpretation, cont.(Dale)

Jun 302008
 
Moses Stuart (1780-1852), professor at Andover Theological Seminary,
and NOT a fan of Rational Reconstruction (image credit)


What, if anything, is wrong with with the strategy of Resolution through Rational Reinterpretation? And why are most theologians so cold towards this strategy, while most Christian philosophers love it? Consider this quote by Moses Stuart on one of Leibniz’s takes on the Trinity:

The celebrated Leibniz was requested by a Loefler, who had undertaken to refute the writings of a certain English Antitrinitarian, to give him an affirmative definition of the persons in the Godhead. He sent for answer the following: – “Several persons in an absolute substance numerically the same, signify several, particular, intelligent substances essentially related.” On farther consideration, he abandoned this, and sent a second, which was, – “Several persons, in an absolute substance numerically the same, mean relative, incommunicable modes of subsisting.”

If Leibniz actually understood this, I believe he must have been a better master of metaphysics than any person who has ever read his definition. Continue reading »

Quote: On believing what you don’t at all understand (Dale)

Jun 162008
 

“Sounds good to me!” (image credit)

Whoever says he believes what he does not at all understand, knows not what belief is, knows also not what he believes; and therefore, he believes in fact nothing, but it only seems to him [he believes]… Certainly nobody can believe something other than what he considers true… If reason is not necessary to grasp the articles of faith, then consequently it follows that the articles of faith should be presented to irrational animals… especially those which can imitate the human voice like parrots.

– Andrew Wissowatius (a.k.a. Wiszowaty), Die Vernunfftige Religion [1703 German translation of his Latin Religio Rationalis of 1685], quoted in and translated by Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, p. 270 n. 18 [slashes omitted and commas and bold added by me]

Hanson on 4th century Bible interpretation (Dale)

Jan 262008
 


“I thank thee, O Lord, that Thou hast given me the ability
to quickly read this copy of The Message, and easily discern
what it really means, unlike that jerk Flanders.”

Some interesting and disturbing comments from R.P.C. Hanson, on Bible interpretation in the era of the 4th century “Arian” controversy. This comes near the end of this magisterial book, after he’s given numerous examples of exegesis – the good, bad, and the ugly – from that era.

The last word on the appeal to the Bible during this crucial period… must be of the impression made on a student of the period that the expounders of the text of the Bible are incompetent and ill-prepared to expound it. Continue reading »

Prisonbreaking Allegorizing (Dale)

Jan 252008
 


Umm… is there any other way out?

A wise comment from the late great patristics scholar R.P.C. Hanson, in this book.

Eusebius of Emesa in one of his discourses has quite a long passage about allegorizing. He allows that it cannot altogether be rejected but he is very cautious about its use. It tends to read meanings into the text which are good in themselves but are simply not present in the text. It can be an illegitimate short cut. A man who is bound or who is in prison is anxious to be free by any means, but not all means are right. Had all ancient interpreters of the Bible followed this advice, subsequent generations would have been saved the necessity of reading a great deal of nonsense. (p. 829, emphases added)

The history of hermeneutics alone demonstrates that this is not the best possible world. :-)

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