Why Christ's Deity is important

[Mr E]

I'll take a shot at this one:

Christ's followers subscribe to lots of things Jesus did not teach, or at least that Jesus has not been reported to have taught. Most of those things are Pauline, or found elsewhere in NT writings (many of which were written before the gospels were penned). A few have been handed down by tradition independently of the NT. (The shift of the Lord's Day from Saturday to Sunday comes to mind.) The point being, absence of any written record of Jesus teaching a particular doctrine is not the sole litmus test for His followers' adoption of it, nor should it be. (My apologies to the sola scriptura crowd.)

As to the doctrine of the Trinity specifically, my suspicion is it is so widely held for three reasons. First, many believers blindly subscribe to whatever their particular church leaders tell them is true. Second -- to quote Isaac Newton -- "It is the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least.” Third (and this one pertains to me), some Trinitarians understand the development of the Trinity doctrine as the early Church's effort to explain its experience of the risen Christ in philosophical terms. (I happen to think they got it right.)

Yes-- @O'Darby III pointed toward Constantine in another thread--- he, in a direct way marched in a rigid and in so many ways-- wrong perspective and subsequent practice that became what we now call "Christianity." It's not how it began.

 

[Wrangler]

I'm not sure it's a good idea to charge trinitarians, in general, with idolatry.

Why not? I invite you to my thread on IDOLATRY in Christendom.

IDOLATRIES in Christendom

Once upon a time, as a child my understanding of the 2nd Commandment, the prohibition against IDOL worship was a prohibition against worshipping statues as gods. I thought how silly our ancestors were to worship the golden calf, etc. As I became an adult, I put away childish ways and realized...

whitehorseforums.com

The Bible texts that are used to advance both sides of such a question are so sparse and inconclusive to my perception as to be unworthy of discussion.

Unworthy of discussion? My dear sir, this is illogical and against the principles of jurisprudence and statistics. All 3 have a solution when the positive claim is not proved; accept the null hypothesis, find the defendant 'not guilty," and reject the claim.

A spurious expression when such a claim is involved. "Not worth talking about" may have merit when open ended questions are involved, such as who let the dogs out. Once a specific claim is made, such as the professor is the murdered who did it in the library with a candlestick, then the power of logic, statistics and jurisprudence comes into play.

 

[Wrangler]

Christ's followers subscribe to lots of things Jesus did not teach, or at least that Jesus has not been reported to have taught. Most of those things are Pauline, or found elsewhere in NT writings

Not even this applies to the doctrine of the trinity. The doctrine of the trinity is so important that not only did Jesus NOT teach it, it is not found in any of the 66 books of the Bible, including the writings of Paul.

To be clear, when I write that the trinity is not found anywhere in Scripture, I mean that neither the word nor the concept of the trinity is explicitly in the Bible. To avoid the inevitable Appeal to Strawman, there simply is no verse that reads something like The nature of God is a trinity - consisting of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit who are co-equal, co-substantial and co-eternal - and if you do not believe this, you cannot be saved but are damned to hell forever. If there were such a verse, it would be the most quoted verse in Scripture by those who claim one’s salvation depends on believing it. What is missing from Scripture is just as telling as what is explicitly taught.

Third (and this one pertains to me), some Trinitarians understand the development of the Trinity doctrine as the early Church's effort to explain its experience of the risen Christ in philosophical terms. (I happen to think they got it right.)

I've never heard this notion that the trinity is correct because it abides by philosophical terms. Can you elaborate?

 

[RedFan]

Not even this applies to the doctrine of the trinity. The doctrine of the trinity is so important that not only did Jesus NOT teach it, it is not found in any of the 66 books of the Bible, including the writings of Paul.

To be clear, when I write that the trinity is not found anywhere in Scripture, I mean that neither the word nor the concept of the trinity is explicitly in the Bible. To avoid the inevitable Appeal to Strawman, there simply is no verse that reads something like The nature of God is a trinity - consisting of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit who are co-equal, co-substantial and co-eternal - and if you do not believe this, you cannot be saved but are damned to hell forever. If there were such a verse, it would be the most quoted verse in Scripture by those who claim one’s salvation depends on believing it. What is missing from Scripture is just as telling as what is explicitly taught.


I've never heard this notion that the trinity is correct because it abides by philosophical terms. Can you elaborate?

Yes, but "abides by philosophical terms" is not how I would put it, and I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that phrase. So I'll elaborate on "the early Church's effort to explain its experience of the risen Christ in philosophical terms."

The march of Christianity outward from Palestine into the Greek world inevitably resulted in a cultural and philosophical disconnect, as tales told and texts written from a Jewish/messianic perspective were being interpreted by men imbued in a Greek philosophical tradition. Those few scattered passages in the emerging New Testament canon that could arguably be deemed binitarian or (far less frequently) trinitarian yielded no coherent picture of the Son’s participation in the Godhead, and two centuries of patristic thinking were occupied by the effort to weave that idea into a doctrine that was consistent with Scripture. It was thus natural that Greek philosophy, which had long sought to locate an ontological bridge between the One and the Many, between the realm of soul/spirit and the material world, would provide the looms for this tapestry. Particularly in Alexandria, Christianity was discovering its affinity with middle Platonism and using it as a lens through which to view Christian concepts, furnishing the early church fathers with a template for reworking Jewish monotheism into a trinitarianism that could successfully resist devolving into tritheism.

Here's the philosophical problem:

We can express the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (three “persons” in one God) as a set of propositions in this way:

1. There is only one God.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4. The Father is not the Son.
5. The Holy Spirit is God.
6. The Holy Spirit is not the Father.
7. The Holy Spirit is not the Son.

For simplicity’s sake we need consider only 1 through 4 (for 5 through 7 will stand or fall on the same logical analysis we apply to 1 through 4):

1. There is only one God.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4. The Father is not the Son.

The difficulty in defending the Trinity has always been that these four propositions are, as a group, logically inconsistent when analyzed from the standpoint of the three basic rules of logical equivalence: self-identity (everything is identical to itself, i.e., x = x); symmetry (if two things are equivalent, they are equivalent in any order, i.e., if x = y, then y = x); and transitivity (if one thing is the same as another and that other is the same as a third, then the first is the same as the third, i.e., if x = y and y = z then x = z). The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity fares ill in this analysis.

To make them logically consistent, it is tempting to sacrifice one of the four tenets – and most early heresies took this tack. Thus, Arius sacrificed the third one:

1. There is only one God.
2. The Father is God.
4. The Father is not the Son.
3′. Therefore the Son is not God.

and Sabellius sacrificed the fourth one:

1. There is only one God.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4′. Therefore the Father is the Son.

Both Arius’ argument and Sabellius’ argument are logically consistent because, unlike the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, they satisfy all three of the aforementioned principles of logical consistency. Arius and Sabellius, although approaching the inconsistency from different perspectives, each preferred rationality to irrationality―even if it meant preferring heresy to orthodoxy.

Now, we Trinitarians have two choices. We can simply throw up our hands and declare that God does not have to play by the rules of logical consistency, thereby forever assigning the Trinity to the status of unfathomable mystery. Or, we can allow for identity and equivalence to be relative to their contexts. Thus, “Robert is good” can be consistent with “Robert is not good” as long as a different sense of “good” holds for each proposition (e.g., he is a good theologian; he is not a good golfer.)

To say that “The Father is not the Son” is likewise context-dependent and predicate-specific. One can maintain without contradiction both that “The Father is not the same person as the Son” and “The Father is the same God as the Son” by separating out personhood from Godhood. How to tease them apart is the ultimate challenge of orthodox Trinitarian theology. (I’ll explain why “persons” is a poor word to use in expressing the hypostasis concept later, but let's use it for now, since it is so ingrained in tradition.)

Because our experiences are of the physical world, so is our language, so is our thinking, and thus we strive for physical analogies to describe a non-material God. Here's how we might approximate it:

Consider the visible spectrum of light waves at frequencies between the limits of infrared and ultraviolet. The colors are distinct. White is not on the spectrum, because white is not a “color” at all. Rather, white light is produced by combining the colors of the spectrum. More generally, white light is produced in combining three primary colors – red, green and blue. Thus combined, the distinct colors are not separate.



Distinct but not separate. Three colors. One light.

Another way to think of it is to consider a musical chord, say C-major. Three notes, C + E + G -- each of them rightly thought of as "music" -- combine to make a chord which is likewise "music." Each note in the chord has distinct properties, but there is one chord.

But I use a different physical analogy to accomplish the tease-apart of the Godhead by imagining a tetrahedron, a triangular base resting on the earth with three sides rising to a peak above. You could stand in front of each of the three sides, and a different facet will dominate your senses. Each of the three “persons” in one God is not a person in the ordinary sense of denoting a distinct individual, but a persona in the sense of a portrayal or a posture, an outward-looking manifestation of an inward unity. The Greek word prosōpon expresses this rather well—an actor’s mask, a character, a face. We encounter Father, or Son, or Holy Spirit, depending on which face is facing us. The three “persons” are relational; they are distinct realities of the one God.

The one God’s triune nature persists in each of these three faces, as inseparable from each other as are the sides of a pyramid. In that very unity lies their shared essence. It is not a material essence, not shared as the faces of a pyramid share the same core of stone, eliminating any real distinction of substance comprising the sides. That is where Sabellius went wrong, analogizing to the material world and supposing the common “stuff” of the divine to be the defining substance of a single entity. No, the shared essence of these three persons lies in what they form in their unity, as the joining together of triangles edge to edge with a common apex forms the shape we know as a pyramid. It is “pyramidness” itself, not what the pyramid as a solid might be made of, that constitutes this essence.

And so it is with the Godhead. We can never fully comprehend the divine “stuff” of God; that is beyond our power to describe through analogies to the physical world. But the concept of God, like the abstract concept of a three-sided pyramid, is revealed by the particular relation, the particular union, of its distinct faces. Without the three, there is not the One.

Or so I muse.

 

[Mattathias]

Using philosophical terms which neither Jesus nor the Apostles nor anyone else in scripture uses to describe God produces a description of God which neither matches with nor is compatible with the God of Jesus.

There is no God besides the one whom Jesus explicitly states is his God and the God of his disciples.

Trinitarians are welcome to dispute my assertion. It’s the main argument which prevents me from returning to trinitarianism or turning to another deity.

 

[Mattathias]

Christ’s deity isn’t himself nor the Trinity. Christ’s deity is his Father and no other.

Christ is, by definition and practice, a unitarian.

Again, trinitarians are welcome to dispute my assertion. If someone can demonstrate that Christ’s own God is anyone or anything other than the Father alone, I’m open to changing my mind.

 

[Mattathias]

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is also the God of Jesus.

There is no God besides the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Everything else is idols.

I invite trinitarians to dispute my assertion. If anyone can demonstrate that the one whom Jesus explicitly calls his God and the God of his disciples is anyone or anything besides the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I’m open to changing my mind.

 

[Mattathias]

I don’t know about anyone else, and I’m only speaking for myself, but I find it very helpful when someone tells me up front what they believe, why they believe it and what it would take for them to change their mind.

If there is any member of this forum who is concerned about my eternal well being and believes I’m in peril because of my belief about who the one God is, thank you. I’ve spelled out up front what I believe, why I believe it and shat it would take for me to change my mind.

“A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.”

(Luke 6:40)

This is a “refrigerator verse” for me.

Jesus is my teacher. I am his pupil. He has taught me that his God and my God, his Father and my Father is the one true God -> the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am like him. If my god was anyone other than his God and Father, I would not be like him. He would worship one God and I would worship another, an idol.

 

[RedFan]

Using philosophical terms which neither Jesus nor the Apostles nor anyone else in scripture uses to describe God produces a description of God which neither matches with nor is compatible with the God of Jesus.

There is no God besides the one whom Jesus explicitly states is his God and the God of his disciples.

Trinitarians are welcome to dispute my assertion. It’s the main argument which prevents me from returning to trinitarianism or turning to another deity.

Would you welcome a Trinitarian to agree with your assertion? Because I do. The earthly Jesus uttering that statement, having “emptied himself” of whatever “equality” he may have had with the Father (Philippians 2:7), could certainly make such a declaration without offending my Trinitarian sensibilities.

 

[Wrangler]

Now, we Trinitarians have two choices. We can simply throw up our hands and declare that God does not have to play by the rules of logical consistency, thereby forever assigning the Trinity to the status of unfathomable mystery.

I believe I’ve seen this analysis of yours before. A contradiction is not the same as a mystery.

It is not God but truth that must play by logic, The Law of Mutual Exclusivity or Law of Non-Contradiction.
P1. God is in and only in.
P2. God is out and only out.
C. Contradiction. Either P1 or P2 is false.

 

[Mattathias]

Would you welcome a Trinitarian to agree with your assertion?

Yes.

Because I do.

Then why do you have a deity which he didn’t, doesn’t and never will have as his?

The earthly Jesus uttering that statement, having “emptied himself” of whatever “equality” he may have had with the Father (Philippians 2:7), could certainly make such a declaration without offending my Trinitarian sensibilities.

 

[Wrangler]

Or, we can allow for identity and equivalence to be relative to their contexts. Thus, “Robert is good” can be consistent with “Robert is not good” as long as a different sense of “good” holds for each proposition (e.g., he is a good theologian; he is not a good golfer.)

The claim the inherent contradiction of the trinity can be explained through context is false.

Morality requires context. Logic does not. Word play is the only out; semantics or word senses. This is best demonstrated by the book entitled Jesus is not God with a capital-G.