My understanding of the nature of the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit and of the nature of the Godhead can be summarised as follows:
1) The Father is God
2) The Son reveals God
3) The Spirit conveys (or communicates) God
4) There is only one God
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
My conversation with Dale Tuggy
A few days ago I tweeted a link to my previous post and copied in Dale Tuggy, a philosopher specialising in Analytic Theology, Philosophical Theology, Philosophy of Religion and Early Modern Philosophy, who has taught in the Department of Philosophy at The State University of New York at Fredonia since 2000 and who runs the popular Trinities blog and podcast series, some of the episodes of which I have been listening to lately.
Mr Tuggy was good enough to respond to my tweet, and over the next couple of days I had a short conversation with him, via twitter, about the views I had expressed in my post.
The twitter conversation (complete with abbreviations!) is reproduced below. Dale Tuggy's words are in bold.
Me:
A coherent explanation of the Doctrine of #TheTrinity: http://luthersmarbles.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/my-own-take-on-trinity.html?m=1 … #Christianity #Christian #theology #philosophy @DaleTuggy
Dale Tuggy:
There are many arguably coherent ways to parse the language, but most are mutually exclusive. Real problem is fit with the Bible.
Dale Tuggy (again):
Not coherent. Trin sposed to be monoth, but you say 3 Gods. Which in ur view is the one God - the Trinity or the Father?
Me:
Def Father, as per Jesus' words ('Only true God'). Son and Spirit are 'God of (or from) God' as per creed. 3 Gods but 1 div nat.
Dale Tuggy:
Not sure if you mean three Gods or three "God"s. Do you see the difference?
Me:
1 uncaused God (the Father), 2 'Gods' in a secondary sense, deriving their divinity from the Father. Do you think it's heretical?
Dale Tuggy:
No, I think that's subordinationist unitarianism, like that of Clarke, Novatian, or Origen. Not trin because one God not = Trinity
Me:
I just recapped on Clarke and I agree with his views, but they are actually not that different to some East Orth eg. Fr John Behr
Dale Tuggy:
I need to read more East. Orth. sources on the Trinity. I suspect they are ambivalent about whether God = Trinity vs. God = Father
Me:
I think they def more favourable to God=Father than Western trad is. Thanks for comments. Congrats on excellent blog and podcasts
(End of conversation)
Of course Dale Tuggy is right, the formula I came up with in my most recent post was never really going to pass muster as orthodox - at the end of the day it would mean that Christians are worshiping three Gods, even if all three do share the same divine nature. But I've never set any store by the argument that because there is only one divine nature then the three persons who share that nature must all be the same God. If possession of the divine nature makes a Person God, then if three Persons possess that nature there must be three Gods. So this idea about one Supreme God and two secondary Gods deriving their divinity from Him was the closest I could come to what I felt the Trinitarian language was trying to get at. And I'm glad Mr Tuggy mentioned Samuel Clarke because it made me check back on his views (I have come across them once before) and I realise that he too felt that this type of idea was the closest one could come to Trinitarianism while remaining coherent. Dale Tuggy calls this view Subordinationist Unitarianism, which I think is a better label than Tritheism, considering that I am not talking about three 'independent' or separate (as opposed to 'distinct') Gods.
Incidentally, I think that Father John Behr's (the Orthodox Priest who I mentioned in my penultimate tweet) attempt to explain the doctrine of the Trinity can only be rendered coherent if the Son/Word and Spirit are viewed as, in some sense, secondary deities deriving their divinity from the Father.
Every now and then I try to bring my view of the Trinity more into line with traditional orthodoxy - after all, who actually wants to be a heretic? (I prefer the word 'liberal' or even 'radical protestant'). None of these attempts have ever survived any serious scrutiny, though, and this latest one is no different. I do think, however, that the idea of one uncaused, true God, who is in turn the cause of the divinity of his Son and Spirit, is a better approximation to the way the New Testament writers and the earliest Christians appear to have understood the nature of the Godhead than the later Trinitarian theories of Athanasius which, it seems to me, are impossible to conceive of in any coherent or logically plausible way.
Mr Tuggy was good enough to respond to my tweet, and over the next couple of days I had a short conversation with him, via twitter, about the views I had expressed in my post.
The twitter conversation (complete with abbreviations!) is reproduced below. Dale Tuggy's words are in bold.
Me:
A coherent explanation of the Doctrine of #TheTrinity: http://luthersmarbles.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/my-own-take-on-trinity.html?m=1 … #Christianity #Christian #theology #philosophy @DaleTuggy
Dale Tuggy:
There are many arguably coherent ways to parse the language, but most are mutually exclusive. Real problem is fit with the Bible.
Dale Tuggy (again):
Not coherent. Trin sposed to be monoth, but you say 3 Gods. Which in ur view is the one God - the Trinity or the Father?
Me:
Def Father, as per Jesus' words ('Only true God'). Son and Spirit are 'God of (or from) God' as per creed. 3 Gods but 1 div nat.
Dale Tuggy:
Not sure if you mean three Gods or three "God"s. Do you see the difference?
Me:
1 uncaused God (the Father), 2 'Gods' in a secondary sense, deriving their divinity from the Father. Do you think it's heretical?
Dale Tuggy:
No, I think that's subordinationist unitarianism, like that of Clarke, Novatian, or Origen. Not trin because one God not = Trinity
Me:
I just recapped on Clarke and I agree with his views, but they are actually not that different to some East Orth eg. Fr John Behr
Dale Tuggy:
I need to read more East. Orth. sources on the Trinity. I suspect they are ambivalent about whether God = Trinity vs. God = Father
Me:
I think they def more favourable to God=Father than Western trad is. Thanks for comments. Congrats on excellent blog and podcasts
(End of conversation)
Of course Dale Tuggy is right, the formula I came up with in my most recent post was never really going to pass muster as orthodox - at the end of the day it would mean that Christians are worshiping three Gods, even if all three do share the same divine nature. But I've never set any store by the argument that because there is only one divine nature then the three persons who share that nature must all be the same God. If possession of the divine nature makes a Person God, then if three Persons possess that nature there must be three Gods. So this idea about one Supreme God and two secondary Gods deriving their divinity from Him was the closest I could come to what I felt the Trinitarian language was trying to get at. And I'm glad Mr Tuggy mentioned Samuel Clarke because it made me check back on his views (I have come across them once before) and I realise that he too felt that this type of idea was the closest one could come to Trinitarianism while remaining coherent. Dale Tuggy calls this view Subordinationist Unitarianism, which I think is a better label than Tritheism, considering that I am not talking about three 'independent' or separate (as opposed to 'distinct') Gods.
Incidentally, I think that Father John Behr's (the Orthodox Priest who I mentioned in my penultimate tweet) attempt to explain the doctrine of the Trinity can only be rendered coherent if the Son/Word and Spirit are viewed as, in some sense, secondary deities deriving their divinity from the Father.
Every now and then I try to bring my view of the Trinity more into line with traditional orthodoxy - after all, who actually wants to be a heretic? (I prefer the word 'liberal' or even 'radical protestant'). None of these attempts have ever survived any serious scrutiny, though, and this latest one is no different. I do think, however, that the idea of one uncaused, true God, who is in turn the cause of the divinity of his Son and Spirit, is a better approximation to the way the New Testament writers and the earliest Christians appear to have understood the nature of the Godhead than the later Trinitarian theories of Athanasius which, it seems to me, are impossible to conceive of in any coherent or logically plausible way.
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Clarification of my view on the Trinity
I stated in my initial post on this blog that I see the Trinity as more a case of one God in three 'presences' than three Persons: the 'only true God' (the Father, as described by Jesus) is present in the Son, by the Spirit.
The fact that both the Son and the Spirit share all the divine attributes of the Father (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinite love or omnibenevolence etc.), however, means that it is not inappropriate to refer to them also by the title 'God'. I think the reason that the doctrine of the Trinity requires us to say that although all three Persons are God, yet there is only one God, is that if we were to say that there were three gods, that would imply that there were three 'independent' sources of supreme power, three seperate sets of divine attributes, etc.
By saying that although there are three who are God, there is only one God, we are constantly reminded that there is only one supreme 'power source', only one source of infinite love and knowledge etc. - that of the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, as the Nicene Creed puts it. The Son, rather than being God in an unqualified sense like the Father, is 'true God from true God', to borrow another phrase from the creed (italics mine). Likewise with the Spirit. While the Father is uncaused, the Son (God's 'Word' or Wisdom, which became incarnate as Jesus Christ) is eternally generated and the Spirit eternally 'spirated' by the Father. As such, the Father is eternally the source of the divinity of the Son and the Spirit.
When we try to view the doctrine of the Trinity as a logical or mathematical idea it inevitably leads to incoherence if not outright cognitive dissonance. It is, rather, a religious concept expressed in symbolic language. Translated into straightforward, 'face value' terminology, I believe that what it is trying to express is the idea that while there is one supreme God, there are two other Gods who share all of the divine attributes of the supreme God because they derive them from Him.
The fact that both the Son and the Spirit share all the divine attributes of the Father (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinite love or omnibenevolence etc.), however, means that it is not inappropriate to refer to them also by the title 'God'. I think the reason that the doctrine of the Trinity requires us to say that although all three Persons are God, yet there is only one God, is that if we were to say that there were three gods, that would imply that there were three 'independent' sources of supreme power, three seperate sets of divine attributes, etc.
By saying that although there are three who are God, there is only one God, we are constantly reminded that there is only one supreme 'power source', only one source of infinite love and knowledge etc. - that of the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, as the Nicene Creed puts it. The Son, rather than being God in an unqualified sense like the Father, is 'true God from true God', to borrow another phrase from the creed (italics mine). Likewise with the Spirit. While the Father is uncaused, the Son (God's 'Word' or Wisdom, which became incarnate as Jesus Christ) is eternally generated and the Spirit eternally 'spirated' by the Father. As such, the Father is eternally the source of the divinity of the Son and the Spirit.
When we try to view the doctrine of the Trinity as a logical or mathematical idea it inevitably leads to incoherence if not outright cognitive dissonance. It is, rather, a religious concept expressed in symbolic language. Translated into straightforward, 'face value' terminology, I believe that what it is trying to express is the idea that while there is one supreme God, there are two other Gods who share all of the divine attributes of the supreme God because they derive them from Him.
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