Daniel sort of asks me a few questions:

…it would make an interesting discussion as to whether or not the definition we have of “traditional Christianity” on our About Page suggests or encourages [modalism].

Here’s the relevant part of the statement, part of the policy that only real Christians are allowed to blog on their site:

What Theologica Bloggers Believe

… I believe God to reveal himself as three eternal persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Yep – sounds modalist to me; I mean, that’s how many or most will understand it. There’s one being, a person (“himself”) who has “revealed himself as” three eternal persons. This part is extra unclear – are the persons only ways God appears? Or both appears and is? Lives? Three ways he self-reveals? Events involving him? Parts of the one god? You’ll never know. But it looks like some form of eternally concurrent FSH modalism. Nothing unusual here – this is the norm in evangelical circles. If you’re a real Christian, in the eyes of many, you are a modalist. I find it interesting – and disturbing – that this is considered “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all [real Christians]“.

Daniel also says,

I’d also love to hear how, if you were told to define “historical Christianity”, how you would word a definition of the Trinity.

“Historical Christianity” is just a rhetorical term used by evangelical apologists to dismiss or marginalize their theological opponents with one easy stroke, as (to use a Muslim term) “innovators”.

In other words, there’s no such thing. What there are, are more and less popular, connected, related, historical streams of theologizing by various people claiming to be Christians. One can talk about mainstream approaches, of course, and I often call that small-c “catholic” theology – that rough core of theology which is been fairly stable through the history of Catholicism, and which is shared by most Protestants and the Orthodox churches. What is my definition of that, concerning the Trinity? On one level  the creeds.

But these don’t express any one way of thinking about the Trinity. As best I can tell, they give rise to three main approaches: mysterianism, modalism, and something like this (this last, in my experience, never among the laity, but only among sophisticates educated in medieval Catholic theology). And among those versed in recent theology, some “social” approaches – but again, very rarely among the laity.

Among American evangelicals, I believe FSH modalism (or SH modalism) to be the main approach. This is a bummer, as any kind of Son-modalism is ruled out by the New Testament to which evangelicals pledge their allegiance!

There’s a tension here: Theologica’s founder and maintainers, I suppose, don’t want to be responsible for sponsoring dangerous heresy – hence the rule noted above. And yet, they do want a fully open and respectful discussion. I applaud their aim of respectful argument (so often lacking in theological discussion!), and I especially enjoyed this post about Words that Don’t Prove Your Point. Some relevant parts:

Sounds like you’ve been reading X’s heretical garbage.
This has nothing to do with what the person is saying. …

Calvin, Luther, Piper and Joel Olsteen would say you’re wrong.
Ooooh: they’re big and famous and agree with you but, sorry bro, that doesn’t mean your position is right. If there’s equally famous people that disagree with your position then what you’re doing is pretty much name-dropping uselessness.

The majority of Church History would disagree with you so you can’t be right.
Okay, that’s pretty interesting information but it still doesn’t prove the argument wrong. Just because the majority of any group holds a certain position it doesn’t make it right or wrong: it just makes it popular. Now true, the Spirit of God was working throughout Church history but there’s no possible way that you or I can say “Yes, this is most definitely the Hand of God” without some sure sign of heaven.

This last part is a little flip, but I agree with the basic point – that the bolded words don’t constitute an unassailable argument. (I think that they can in some cases be a fairly strong argument.)

But then, why partially exclude (purported) Christians who hold non-mainstream views? I’m guessing that their justification is more a practical than a theoretical one – they want the site to have a catholic focus, and don’t want to have to worry about every Jehovah’s Witness who might become ensconced there.

On the second one, I’m pretty sure, they meant “Osteen”.

And I’m also sure that he’d agree with everything in my post here – and that settles it!

All right, back to reading X’s heretical garbage…

Many recent Christian philosophers have offered what I call Rational Reconstructions of apparently contradictory doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. Though I’m presently exploring criticisms of such views, let me emphasize that I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing, and I think that people with philosophical skills who are Christians ought to use them in any way which is helpful to the Christian community. At bare minimum, these folks are exploring possible views, possible ways to understand the Trinity (etc.). Getting clear about what the options are, and the costs and benefits of each, is an important kind of theoretical progress. Moreover, it shows intellectual integrity and courage, and concern for the truth.

At the end of my last post in the series, I noted that Rational Reconstructors often don’t believe their new version of the Doctrine. In any case, I’ve never seen one that insists that their version is the one which all Christians ought to believe. This latter isn’t surprising – we professors simply don’t have any authority to lay down a theory as required by any Christian community. But it is surprising that these folks are exercising some immense intellectual energy, and writing very involved and difficult pieces expounding views to which they do not commit? What is going on?

Short answer: apologetics. They’re deflecting bullets, as it were, with the theoretical equivalent of Wonder Woman’s super-duper bracelets. They have in mind an opponent of (small-c catholic, orthodox, or “historic”) Christianity who holds that the Doctrine in question is obviously contradictory, or even demonstrably contradictory.

They’re arguing like this:

We can’t rule out that the Doctrine ought to be understood as X.
X might be thought weird, but
X isn’t obviously contradictory, and
X isn’t demonstrably contradictory. (i.e. There’s no argument that X is contradictory such that any sane adult human will regard it as obviously valid and sound.)

Notice, they’re not telling you what the Doctrine means, or what the best way to interpret it is. In a sense, they’re not even, necessarily, revealing what they think this great and true Doctrine is. Rather, they’re showing that the traditional formulas which are taken to express the doctrine can be understood in at least one consistent way, which way they have carefully, with a Philosopher’s skill and precision, laid out, perhaps for the first time.

There are a couple of unsatisfying things about this genre of writing.

1. For one thing, they’re often mere defense. (Not always – sometimes the author does hold forth his new-fangled theory as something we ought to believe.) They just don’t give the inquiring mind anywhere to rest.

2. The opponents are largely imaginary or uninteresting, or they wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be satisfied with the above style of argument. Permit me to belabor this point (which applies more to non-philosophical apologetics than to the work of philosophical theologians).

• Atheists don’t generally think much about the Trinity or the Incarnation. Why should they? They don’t even believe in theism, and they certainly don’t accept the Bible (or the Church) as an instrument of divine revelation.
• Other supposed opponents are “cultists” and “rationalists”. Now sure, sometimes Jehovah’s Witness or whoever lob an accusation that some Doctrine is patently contradictory. But it’s rare to find a careful thinker or scholar from said group who can make a case for this, a case worth rebutting. The “Rationalist” is a sort of bogeyman who appears in some apologetic and theological writing, who proudly refuses to submit his reason to divine Revelation, and so consequently rejects the Trinity or Incarnation, etc. This generic term is probably meant to cover three kinds of people who engage in theology: the Liberal theologian, the Unitarian, and the Deist. But the first and last simply don’t believe that the Bible (and/or the Church) is (or is a means of) divine revelation. So they just aren’t concerned about doctrines allegedly based on those sources, and pay little attention to the Doctrine. Besides, there basically never has been a sizable Deist movement.
• If “Unitarians” means Unitarian Universalists, they are simply not a Christian movement, and so pay little attention to questions of Christian theology. So, who cares what they think about, say, the Trinity? If this means other (non-UU) unitarians (i.e. people who identify God with the Father) there were, in the 17th to the first half of the 19th c. many sophisticated unitarian Christians, some of whom argued that the Trinity (etc.) is contradictory, but these have fallen almost entirely off the map of current Christian theologians, philosophers, and apologists, basically because there are no large (non-UU) unitarian groups nowadays, in contrast with the late 18th-early 19th centuries, and in any case, these unitarians, just like contemporary “biblical unitarians”, emphasized the (alleged) lack of biblical support for the Trinity and Incarnation doctrines, rather than their (alleged) inconsistency. Note that they hold out for biblical support – they reject appeals to ecumenical councils, or the teaching magisterium, etc. So, their objections aren’t primarily “rationalistic” – but rather exegetical and methodological. But apologetics judo doesn’t and can’t help with those sorts of difficulties. In my scheme of R’s I classify them as Revisers.

3. The biggest limitation, to my mind, is this: It is no great victory if some belief of mine fails to be obviously or demonstrably contradictory. Call this sort of unfortunate claim a Whopper of a Contradiction.

• For one thing, a potential belief may not be a Whopper Contradiction, but there is little to no reason to believe it, or some reason to believe it, but more to disbelieve it.
• Again, a belief may be apparently contradictory to me without being a Whopper of a Contradiction. It may be that every time I carefully consider it, it seems this way. Still, it may not be an obvious or demonstrable contradiction. But it seems I ought not believe it.
• Again, if a say words that are unintelligible, or have a vague belief, what I say can’t be a Whopper of a Contradiction.
• Arguably, no substantial religious beliefs turn out to be a Whopper. If something was obviously contradictory, few intelligent people would believe it. And philosophers know that few things are demonstrable (provable) – when we keep in mind the technical sense of “demonstrable” explained above. Usually, the argument won’t get very far before there’s a premise which a reasonable person could deny.

In sum, these arguments (that said Doctrine is not a Whopper Contradiction) are generally pretty effective, because they aim so low, but they are not terribly helpful to the thinking Christian trying to decide what to think of the Doctrine, i.e. to decide on its proper meaning and justification. At the end we’re left with only a possible contender for a way to understand the Doctrine in question (if you can get your head around it).

Next time: one last problem with Resolution through Rational Reinterpretation.

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