My email to Dr Beau Branson

Dr Beau Branson, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brescia University in the USA. A presentation by him on his 'Monarchical' version of Trinitarianism can be found here.

Dear Dr Branson,

I long ago ceased to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, chiefly because of what I consider to be its logical incoherence. However, I also believe that the one version of Trinitarianism which seems closest to being susceptible of a rational interpretation is that espoused by Fathers John Behr and Thomas Hopko and, as far as I can tell, by yourself (all adherents of the Orthodox branch of the Christian faith) which holds that while the one God is most definitely the Father, yet the Son and the Spirit are each also God in some secondary or derived sense. 

My problem with this understanding of the Trinity, however, is that it seems to me to equivocate as to the sense in which we may refer to the Son and the Spirit as God. Clearly when we call the Son God we cannot mean that he is the same God as the Father, otherwise he would simply BE the Father. But if by calling him God we mean that he is a different God to the Father then surely we are guilty of tritheism. I would be most grateful if you could clarify your position and clear up this conundrum for me. Thanks in advance for your help.

Kind regards,

Andrew

See Dr Branson's response to my email.

Reflection on the previous post

It seems to me, on reflection, that the Eastern Orthodox formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity as explicated by Fr John Behr, Fr Thomas Hopko, Dr Beau Branson and others, which I described in the previous post, while it doesn't suffer from the logical problems that other versions of the DOT do, still suffers from the semantic problem that the term "is God" is used in a way that makes no sense in modern English (I alluded to this in the previous post itself). We do not use the term God as an adjective but only as a noun (or a proper noun). Thus, for the Orthodox at any rate, the trinity doctrine would be more correctly formulated in English as follows:

The Father is divine
The Son is divine
The Sprit is divine
There is only one God (namely, the Father)

Also, the part of the Nicene creed describing the relation of the Son to the Father would be more correctly translated by the admittedly cumbersome phrase "divine Person of God, light of light, true divine Person of true God".

While a semantic problem is not as serious as a logical one, I am also not convinced that the above formulations represent what the average Orthodox Christian actually believes. If asked "is Christ actually God, or merely a divine Person", I can't help thinking that most Orthodox believers would affirm Christ's deity rather than just His divinity.

An Orthodox solution to the logical problem of the doctrine of the trinity?

I have mentioned before in this blog about how some Orthodox theologians seem to believe that the one true God is simply the Father. In that regard I referenced Fr John Behr, but I have read a similar view from Fr Thomas Hopko. Both of them, however, maintain that the Son and Spirit may also be referred to as God - a point that I did not feel that either of them particularly clarified the reasons for. I have also discussed in a previous post the significance of the definite article and lack thereof (theos vs ho theos) in the wording of 1st John Chapter 1 vs 1. In this lecture which I came across this morning, by another Orthodox theologian (Dr Beau Branson) both of these points are brought together, and the position elucidated by Behr and Hopko (both of whom are mentioned in the lecture) is made even more explicit: The one true God is NOT the Trinity but simply the Father. There are three divine Persons - Father, Son and Spirit - with the latter two deriving their divinity from the former (something else I have discussed previously on this blog). The Son and Spirit are called God but (according to Branson) not in the same sense (the 'definite article' sense) as the Father is. In other words, neither the Son or the Spirit is "the One God". That title is reserved strictly for the Father. (This distinction between the ways in which the term 'God' is used to reference the Father and the way it can be used to denote the other two Persons is, admittedly, still rather unclear to me. It seems to me that it would be better, in modern English, to simply use the adjective 'divine' to describe the Son and the Spirit while reserving the title of 'God' for the Father alone).
The view of the doctrine of the trinity described in this post is, apparently, considered orthodox (both with and without a capital 'O') in the Eastern Church and is, according to Branson, the view of all the Church fathers prior to Augustine.
If this is correct (and I believe it is) then the problem of the coherence (or perceived lack of it) of the doctrine of the trinity is resolved. In its Orthodox formulation, as outlined by the likes of Behr, Hopko and now Branson (amongst others who Branson refers to in the lecture I have linked to), it seems the doctrine is not incoherent at all and may be believed in without compromising ones intellectual integrity.

Update: See my next post, which is a reflection on this one.

My current view on the Doctrine of the Trinity

I still don't believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is literally true, but I am comfortable with that, just as I am comfortable believing that the Bible is not all to be understood literally.
Here's how I understand the DOT now, and it's essentially no different to the view that I had when I started this blog:

When we say 'the Father is God', we mean that completely literally. The Father is God in an absolute and unqualified sense.

When we say 'the Son is God', we mean that God (ie. the Father) is fully present in the Son. We may treat the Son as if He were God, since everything He says and does is what the Father is saying and doing through Him, and every attribute He possesses is derived from the Father.

When we say 'the Son is not the Father', we mean that the Father's presence in the Son in no way diminishes the Son's individuality or personality.

When we say 'the Spirit is God', we mean that God is fully present by His Spirit.

When we say 'the Spirit is not the Father or the Son', we mean that it is not just the Father, or just the Son, who is present by the Spirit, but both the Father and the Son, and also that the presence of the Spirit in the life of one whom He indwells, in no way diminishes the individuality or personality of the latter.

The Nicene Creed vs. the Doctrine of the Trinity

Kermit Zarley left the following comment on my 'Minecraft model of the Trinity’ post:
Instead of trying to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, how about trying to understand the Bible. In this post, you don't mention a single text in it.
That’s good advice, and I know what he means, and I have tried to adhere to that principle in the past (see this post, for example). The trouble is, one thing that seems to be a fundamental principle uniting all Christians around the world – and it’s been this way for over 1500 years – is adherence to the Nicene (really the Niceno-Constantinopolitan) creed. True, there are groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Christadelphians who reject the Nicene creed – and the doctrine of the Trinity altogether – but, although they would call themselves Christian, they are (rightly or wrongly) not generally considered to be true Christians by the rest of the Church. In many churches, the Nicene creed is recited weekly as a way for the congregation members to re-affirm their faith and to express their unity with other Christians around the world. I find it very hard to be part of a faith, one of the fundamental tenets of which I am unable to give my assent to. My refusal to give up once and for all on the doctrine of the Trinity has largely been motivated by this unwillingness to accept that the faith in which I first encountered God, and through which I have met many people – including family members - who have demonstrated and modeled the reality of God to me in the way they live their lives, could be so wrong in one of its most foundational beliefs.
But my problem with the doctrine of the Trinity is largely constituted by the fact that its premises are inherently self-contradictory and illogical. This means that much of the mental gymnastics involved in my many attempts to render it coherent and therefore believable tend to involve philosophical speculation as opposed to biblical exegesis.
One thing I’ve realised recently, though, is that while I do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity in the sense of three, consubstantial divine Persons, each of whom is the one God – a doctrine which (as far as I can tell) not taught in the bible in any clear sense and which I doubt was believed by those who became Christians in the days of the first Apostles – that does not necessarily mean that I cannot assent to the Nicene creed.
The part of the Nicene creed that I have generally had a problem with is the bit that says of Jesus that He is, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” However, I am not certain that this has to be understood in an orthodox trinitarian way. I certainly believe that, in one sense, Jesus is what God is. I explained in a previous post that this is how I understand the sense of the opening sentence of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and what God was, the Word was. What I understand by this is that God always works through His Son, so that Jesus is imbued by God with all of God’s qualities (for the sake of the argument I’m not going to get into the notion of divine simplicity and its implications for the possibility of God having multiple qualities!) as well possessing the authority to act in God’s name. One way of describing this situation would be to say that Jesus is what God is, but not who God is. This is not to be confused with the very common argument put forward by trinitarians that God is ‘three Whos and one What’. As I have explained in previous posts, that argument is, in my opinion, pure sophistry, and in no way resolves the contradictory nature of the doctrine of the Trinity. Put simply, if each of the three ‘Whos’ is identical to the one ‘What’, then there can be no distinction between those three ‘Whos’. And if the three ‘Whos’ are thought of as being, in some sense, three distinct minds or consciousnesses, floating around inside the one ‘What’ like ghosts in the divine machine, then the Persons are not identical with the ‘What’ (which is, after all, the one God) but rather are inhabitants or, at best, parts or aspects of God.
But what I am arguing is that while Jesus is not who God is – only the Father is God, and Jesus is not the Father – Jesus is what God is in the sense that he is identical to God in every way except for the fact that He (the Son, ie. Jesus) is not the ultimate source of the divine power, authority, knowledge, wisdom, love etc. that he possesses (and surely many trinitarian Christians would agree with that last point, since many of them believe that the Son is eternally generated by the Father).
So if the phrase “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father” can be understood as referring to the fact that Jesus is what God is (without it having to mean that Jesus is who God is), then I have no problem in reciting the Nicene creed.
As for the part of the creed which refers to the Holy Spirit, it does not call the Spirit God but describes the Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life” who is to be “worshiped and glorified”. I have never had a problem with this part of the creed. God’s Spirit is, by definition, divine (and therefore worthy of worship), just as the human spirit is human, and it is by His Spirit that God imparts life.
I have mentioned the Eastern Orthodox priest Father John Behr in a previous post, as someone whose ideas about the Trinity seem to me to make more sense that those of most (small ‘o’) orthodox Christians. The other day I came across this talk by Father John, and to my surprise he seems to be describing the Trinity in a way that is – possibly – compatible with the understanding of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that I have argued for in this post (although I don’t fully agree with stuff he's previously written on the Trinity, such as this post, so it's possible I am misunderstanding him). If it is the case that my views on the nature of God would be considered acceptable by such a prominent Orthodox priest and theologian then I have no further need to worry about whether or not those views are compatible with those of the wider Church. I consider the Orthodox Church to be a good guide to the theological views of the Church of the early centuries of Christianity, since (as far as I understand) it ceased to hold any councils after the split with Rome in 1054, whereas the Church in the West continued – and still does continue in both its catholic and protestant forms - to develop its doctrines and teachings. I have mentioned in a previous comment that the Orthodox understanding of the atonement – which is centred around the idea of Jesus triumphing over death on our behalf – makes much more sense to me than the western idea that God needs to punish someone – even someone completely innocent - before he is able to forgive.

Clarification of yesterday's post

The more I consider what I wrote in yesterday’s post, the more I realise that it is all about idioms or manners of speaking, rather than about questions of truth or falsehood. In a strictly literal sense, the Father is the “only true God” (John 17:3), while the Son and Spirit are of God (ie. the Son of God and the Spirit of God) rather than strictly identical with Him. But to describe the Son as God is not a falsehood any more than, in the scenario described in the previous post, to refer to my Minecraft avatar, or to the ‘me’ character in my fictional story, as ‘me’ would be false. Those things aren’t literally me, but by referring to them as ‘me’, I am acknowledging that they represent me and function as me to all intents and purposes. To call them ‘me’ is not to say something which is untrue, it is merely to use an accepted idiom or manner of speech. Similarly, when we refer to the second and third Persons of the Trinity as God we are speaking not literally but idiomatically, in order to highlight the fact that the Son is the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and that the Spirit is the Spirit of God (and of Christ). So yes, the Father is God and in another sense the Son is God and the Spirit is God. And there is only one God!

The Minecraft model of the Trinity

As a person, I can take more than one form! I have my normal bodily form – that is, I am made of flesh and blood, just like all humans are. But when I play Minecraft (a computer game involving a simulated world) with my son, I am represented by an avatar (a computerised image of a person, that I control) by means of which I can walk around, build houses etc, in the virtual environment. In the Minecraft world, that avatar is, in a sense at least, me. My son will say things like, “you can come and visit me in my house”, and when he says “you” he is not referring to the flesh and blood me, but to my avatar. Likewise, if I decide to write a story and portray myself as one of the characters in the story, that character – even though he may get up to things that I’ve never actually done in real life – is also, in a sense, me. It's not merely that he is based on me; within the world depicted in my story, that character is me. The other characters in the story will refer to him, quite rightly, as Andrew (my name). So, in this sense, it is possible for me to exist as one person in at least three distinct forms.
Now, I realise that the doctrine of the Trinity is very different to this. God is not one person with three distinct forms. He is beyond mere personhood. So, whereas I can be one person in three distinct forms, God can be one Being in three distinct Persons. And whereas, in my case, each of the three 'objects' (flesh and blood, Minecraft avatar, story character) has the same one 'subject' (me), in the case of God, each of the three subjects (Father, Son and Spirit) has the same one superpersonal,divine Nature (God). But the two concepts (that of one person in three forms and that of one Being in three Persons) can be regarded as analogous. And this analogy can, it seems to me, clear up many of the apparent logical inconsistencies that have previously plagued my many attempts to understand the doctrine of the Trinity.
For example, in the above scenarios I described myself as one person in three forms. The flesh and blood me, is (obviously) me – in fact you could probably call it the only true me (and Jesus, in John 17:3, calls the Father "the only true God"); the Minecraft avatar is me; and the story character is me. Yet, even though I exist in three forms, not one of those forms of me has three forms itself. The flesh and blood me isn’t a Minecraft avatar or a story character, the Minecraft avatar isn’t flesh and blood or a character in a story, and the character in the story isn’t flesh and blood or a Minecraft avatar. Yet still, in some sense, each of them is me. You could say that while the Minecraft avatar (for example) is me, there is more to me than a Minecraft avatar.
If the ‘me’ character in the story that I’ve written gets bitten by a dog in that story, then it would be true to say that I have been bitten by a dog (in the story) while at the same time it would also be true to say that I have never been bitten by a dog (in real life). So, because of the existence of different forms of me (the flesh and blood, the Minecraft avatar and the story character) inhabiting different levels of reality (the real world, the Minecraft world and the story world) it becomes possible to say that I have been both bitten by a dog and never bitten by a dog, which sounds like a logical contradiction and yet is true because - even though there is only one me - that ‘me’ exists in three different forms.
Bearing all of the above in mind it becomes possible, by analogy, to say things like the following:

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; the Father is not the Son or Spirit, the Son is not the Father or Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father or Son – and yet there is only one God.

or,

God became a man and was crucified. The Father is God. The Father did not become a man or get crucified. There is only one God.

In the past I have considered these types of statements as being self-contradictory and therefore illogical and incoherent, but – if one remembers my description of one human being (me) in three forms, and the paradoxical-yet-true statements that can result from that concept – then it is possible, by analogy, to hold each part of the above statements as simultaneously true and not indicative of any contradiction.
In other words, if you accept that it is possible for a human person to exist – in some sense – in three forms, then you must also accept that it is possible for a Divine Being to exist – at least in some sense – in three Persons.