Tuesday 28 March 2017
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!
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I guess the more elusive the concepts the more problematic terminology becomes. I think your analogy works (and I whole-heartedly agree with your conclusion) but it just seems a bit reductive. Anyway the post made me think again about why I believe what I believe and I found this excellent talk in the process. http://www.theologynetwork.org/christian-beliefs/doctrine-of-god/getting-stuck-in/trinity-2--trinity-is-the-answer.htm
ReplyDeleteSeems from this summary of the history of the doctrine that terminology has always been a problem, but it's well worth the trouble of overcoming the obstacle, contrary, perhaps, to Luther's warning.
Hi Paul, thanks for the link, I enjoyed listening to it. I have always found the Eastern Church a bit more coherent on the Trinity than the West is. I also find their understanding of the atonement far less problematic than the Western (protestant) penal substitution one. I think the lecturer in the link you sent me is wrong to say that the Eastern Church was “stealing” from the Cappadocian idea of the Persons being the substance of God’s being, by making the Father out to be the source of the Divine nature (the bit at the end about the filioque). If, as he states in his ‘social trinitarian’ interpretation of the Cappadocians, “God is the Father, Son and Spirit loving each other” then how can any of the three Persons be anything more than ‘parts’ (or maybe ‘members’) of God? But if the Father (rather than the love between the Persons) is the “true God” (John 17:3), then the other two persons can be regarded as divine by virtue of their oneness with the Father (John 10:30).
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day, though, I am pretty certain that the idea of three distinct ‘whos’ each being literally identical to the same one ‘what’ is self-contradictory.
It’s a complicated and confusing subject. I guess Luther (and Augustine’s boy on the beach) had a point!
Also, I think it is quite telling that at both the beginning and the end of the talk, the speaker explains that once the matter of the Trinity doctrine has been dealt with, they can then get on with focusing on the Bible for the rest of the course!
ReplyDeleteHi Andrew, I've been think more about this off and on, and I realise that what was troubling me was why the apparent contradiction of the trinity doesn't worry me. After all, in general, I see the 'law of non-contradiction' as very important in apprehending objective truth. Then I was reminded of C S Lewis in Mere Christianity, which I find takes the matter beyond the terminoligical problems. I'm referring to chapter 26, titled, Good Infection. If you want to check it out but don't have it handy, you can read it here http://www.ldolphin.org/CSLtrinity.html
ReplyDeleteI also came across a good exposition of Lewis' position by Ravi Zacharias (scholar, christian apologist and evangelist) of whom I am a big fan. You can see it here (but don't be distracted by the short intro - RZ follows on soon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9gwoZNudCI
So anyway, I think for me it's a matter of coming to terms with what the bible says about the nature of God. This transcends the logical problems that arise from an abstracted and unbiblical way of trying to define and describe what we call the trinity, but the but the bible in fact doesn't.
All the best!
Hi Paul, thanks for that. I am a great admirer of Charles Staples and especially of his ability to explain complicated things in clear simple language. However, even he isn't able, in my opinion, to make the doctrine of the Trinity coherent. A couple of years ago I wrote this post explaining why I think his description of the Trinity in 'Mere Christianity' fails to resolve the problems: http://luthersmarbles.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/cs-lewiss-cube-analogy.html Funnily enough, I mentioned the same talk by Ravi Zacharias that you mentioned in your reply to me yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI know I am being reductive, but I don't think that's always a bad thing. And what I am questioning is the official, traditional, orthodox understanding of the Trinity as expounded in the Nicene/Constantinopolitan creed and particularly in the (so-called) Athanasian creed, ie. three Persons who are not each other and yet are all the exact same Being. This just seems patently incoherent and self contradictory. Like yourself, I have no problem with what the Bible says about the Father, Son and Spirit. I just don't think it says that they are three distinct Persons who all constitute a single divine Essence or Being.
Wow, there's a coincidence! The exact same sources. You're right, the bible doesn't say it. I haven't studied the relevant passages in detail, but I'd say that on the whole it stresses the relational nature of God, especially in John's Gospel for example. So there's no solution to our reductionist problem with the DOT that I'm aware of, but I'm content to dwell on the what the bible does say, rather than what it doesn't say. As I write, however, my curiosity about how the most eminent (whoever they might be) systematic theologians deal with the reductionist problem is aroused. Says he, reaching for Wayne Grudem...
ReplyDelete